It has been five years of the illegal expulsion of Turkish teachers the criminal cases against some of which are being examined in appeals courts in Turkey, while others were already set free, but are in Turkey as they cannot leave the country to reunite with their families that live in Moldova too, said experts of Promo-LEX Association, who reiterated their call to the authorities to make serious efforts to discover the truth about this case and to fully investigate, under adequate public control, the possible involvement of any public figure holding high ranking posts, IPN reports.
After Moldova was convicted by the European Court of Human Rights, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe issued four decisions concerning the execution of the decision in the case of Ozdil and others, by which the Moldovan authorities were requested to take more individual and general measures. Representatives of the Legal Resources Center from Moldova and of Promo-LEX Association remitted several communications on this case to the committee of Ministers.
In the last case examination session on December 6-8, 2022, the Committee of Minister welcomed the authorities’ decision to declassify material of the criminal case started against the former head of the Security and Intelligence Service Vasile Botnari and another 14 documents related to the given events. The Committee encouraged again the authorities to take into account the necessity of transmitting a clear message, from the highest political level, about the absolutely inacceptable character and zero tolerance of arbitrary detention and extralegal transfers. The Committee invited the authorities to provide information about all the aspects mentioned earlier by October 31, 2023.
The criminal case concerning the expulsion of Turkish teachers continues being tried in Moldova. In February, the Chisinau Appeals Court accepted the complaint submitted by Galina Tufekci, the wife of one of the Turkish teachers, annulling an order of 2020 by which she was illegally and abusively stripped of the status of injured party and requesting the Chisinau Prosecutor’s Office to deal with the violations of her rights in a specific case. In her name and in the name of her husband, Galina Tufekci challenged this decision in the Supreme Court of Justice. The case is pending.
It was ascertained that the Prosecutor General’s Office doesn’t conduct investigations in the other criminal cases related to the Turkish citizens. “Despite the statements and promises made by a number of politicians, some of whom are now in power, nothing was done to ease the situation of the Turkish citizens who are in detention. When officials of the Government and Parliament of the Republic of Moldova paid visits to Turkey, the situation of the Turkish teachers hasn’t been even raised,” said Promo-LEX.
The Association calls on the authorities to further obtain detailed information from the Turkish authorities about the current situation of the plaintiffs in Turkey and about the possibility of applying the Council of Europe Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons.
The seven foreign citizens – teachers and managers of the Orizont network of lyceums – were declared undesirable and expelled on September 6, 2018. The expelled citizens were convicted in Turkey. On June 11, 2019, the ECHR ascertained that the Republic of Moldova violated the rights of the seven Turkish citizens and obliged the state to pay by €25,000 to five Turkish citizens. The former SIS director Vasile Botnari was given a suspended sentence and was only fined 88,000 lei.
