An Ankara court ordered the release of 13 detained defendants in the mass trial over events at Akıncı Air Base, which prosecutors portrayed as the command center of Turkey’s July 15, 2016 coup attempt.
The Ankara 4th High Criminal Court issued the ruling after a hearing at the Sincan prison complex, where 486 defendants were being tried over alleged actions linked to the base outside Ankara.
After hearing requests from the defendants and their lawyers, the prosecutor asked the court to release 13 defendants under judicial supervision, citing the state of the evidence and the possibility that the legal classification of the accusations against them could change.
The court adjourned the hearing for one hour to deliberate.
When the hearing resumed, the panel accepted the prosecutor’s request and ordered the release of Mehmet Özkan Haniçi, Erkan Çoban, Cemal Tazesavaş, Selim Demir, Melih Yılmaz, Hüseyin Tanju Taşkıran, Mahmut Tülüce, Mustafa Özbek, Ahmet Pala, Hasan Hüseyin Cerrahoğlu, Tuncay Sarı, İbrahim Doğru and Ahmet Cebel.
The court ruled that the other detained defendants would remain in custody.
The panel also ordered the detention of Gökhan Şahin Sönmezateş, a defendant who was being tried without pretrial detention in the Akıncı case and had been convicted in a separate trial in Muğla over an alleged attempt to assassinate President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan during the coup attempt.
The court also requested copies of the case files from the Muğla assassination trial and the case concerning the raid on TÜRKSAT, Turkey’s state satellite operator, which was also attacked on the night of the coup attempt.
The hearing was adjourned to Dec. 11.
The Akıncı trial was one of the largest proceedings opened after the coup attempt. Prosecutors alleged that orders to overthrow the government were coordinated from the base, which housed military aircraft involved in the events of that night.
