A Turkish former prosecutor has been arrested in Turkey’s northwestern Edirne province while trying to escape to Greece with his wife and children, Turkish media report.
According to the Daily Sabah newspaper, Turkish gendarmes patrolling the border in Edirne’s Ipsala district caught a group attempting to illegally cross into Greece. Among those detained were Zafer Kilinc, his wife and his two sons.
Kilinc is wanted by Turkish authorities for his alleged role in the Fethullah Gulen network, called FETO by the Turkish government and classified as a terror organization.
Daily Sabah writes that Kilinc was the prosecutor in a 2013 case involving hundreds of people, including 49 active-service soldiers, who faced trial on charges of “keeping confidential military information and documents”.
The defendants were acquitted in 2016 and Kilinc suspended by Turkey’s judicial authorities.
Last week another Gulen-linked suspect was arrested from a Greek-flagged yacht in the Aegean resort town of Marmaris. Turkey said he was attempting to flee to Greece.
Turkey accuses the Gulen network and its U.S.-based leader of orchestrating the coup of July 15, 2016, which left 250 people dead and nearly 2,200 injured.