Turkey: five suspects sentenced to life imprisonment for assassination of Russian ambassador
Andrei Karlov, Russian Ambassador to Turkey, here alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin in October 2016. Andrei Karlov was killed on December 19, 2016 by a Turkish policeman, on leave that day, during the opening of an exhibition of photos in the city center of the Turkish capital.
REUTERS / Osman Orsal / File Photo
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2 min
Five Turks were sentenced to life in Ankara on Tuesday for their involvement in the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey in 2016 who was shot dead by a Turkish policeman.
Mert Altıntaş claimed to want to punish Moscow for its support for the Syrian regime then in the process of recapturing the martyred city of Aleppo.
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With our correspondent in Istanbul,
Anne Andlauer
Sixteen of the 28 defendants in this trial opened in January 2019 faced life imprisonment.
The court finally sentenced five of them, named as the main accomplices of the murderer, Mert Altıntaş, to the maximum sentence.
The latter, a 22-year-old policeman, was shot dead on the spot in a shootout with the police.
Gülen's shadow
The indictment explicitly targeted the network of Fethullah Gülen, this preacher installed in the United States for twenty years and accused by Ankara of having sponsored the failed coup of July 2016, but also
the assassination. of the Russian diplomat
.
The court decided to separate the case of Fethullah Gülen and eight other fugitive suspects.
Six other people were acquitted and eight others sentenced to prison, including seven for "belonging to a terrorist organization".
The prosecution also accused the suspects of having wanted to "break bilateral relations" between Turkey and Russia.
After a period of crisis following the destruction of a Russian bomber by the Turkish air force in 2015, Russian-Turkish relations have on the contrary developed considerably after the abortive coup.
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