May 10, 2016•Update: May 10, 2016
By Murat Kaya
ISTANBUL
An Istanbul court has remanded in custody the suspect Murat S. who is linked to last week’s attempted shooting of Turkish journalist Can Dundar.
He is charged with attempted murder.
The court also placed an international travel ban on another suspect who is a foreigner.
The court's decisions came following the arrests of seven suspects, including the foreigner whose nationality has not been revealed, who were allegedly associates of Murat S.
Three of them were released after questioning by the prosecutor. Investigation is ongoing for the remaining suspects, a security official said on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on speaking to media.
Dundar, editor-in-chief of the Cumhuriyet newspaper, was attacked outside Istanbul's Caglayan court on Friday, before he was sentenced to five years and 10 months imprisonment for revealing state secrets. The newspaper’s Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gul was sentenced to five years. Both men are currently free awaiting an appeal hearing.
TV footage showed a gunman firing shots before being pulled away by an onlooker and Dundar’s wife and being overpowered by police officers. A TV news reporter, Yagiz Senkal, was slightly injured in the leg during the incident.
Dundar and Gul were tried following the publication of images purporting to show arms being transported to Syria in trucks belonging to Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT).
The case is linked to searches carried out on MIT trucks on two occasions in January 2014. In May last year, Cumhuriyet ran a story and images purporting to show the discovery of arms in the Syria-bound trucks.
The two defendants were arrested late last November and held in prison until Feb. 26, when Turkey's Constitutional Court ruled that their rights had been violated and ordered their release.
