Update (2:53pm): Sources in the Lyceum “Orizont” have told IPN that director Turgay Shen was released.
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The director general of the Chisinau Theoretical Lyceum “Orizont” Turgay Shen was arrested at the Chisinau International Airport when he intended to go on a business trip. Contacted by IPN, Raisa Novitskaya, press officer of the Border Police, could not say why this was arrested. The Border Police acted at the request of the law enforcement agencies of Moldova.
On its electronic page, the paper Ziarul de Garda said, quoting a teacher of the lyceum who was to accompany Turgay Shen, that when the two arrived at the airport at 5:30am, when going through passport control Turgay Shen was told to wait. There were representatives of the Security and Intelligence Service there. The lyceum’s director called a lawyer as he didn’t understand what was going on. He was interrogated, but wasn’t told what he was suspected of. He was taken to the Prosecutor’s Office for Organized Crime and Special Cases. According to the teacher, who makes reference to lawyers’ statements, the presented citation said something about terrorism financing, but provided no details. The teacher also said that Turgay Shen wrote an application to be offered political asylum so that he was not detained, as they did recently in Kosovo.
On March 29, the police in Kosovo arrested six Turkish citizens who were later extradited to Turkey. On its website, Radio Free Europe said Turkey asked that these persons should be extradited because they had connection with the network of schools financed by the Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, currently in the U.S., whom Ankara accuses of organizing the coup attempt of 2016.
