Turkey's 16th Penal Chamber has dismissed charges against former Police Chief Hanefi Avcı on Wednesday after a request of a revision of decision was submitted by the Supreme Court of Appeals Prosecutor's Office.
A decision was made against Avcı, who was charged with five years and seven months in prison for 'assisting the members of the outlawed Revolutionary Headquarters Organization' by the 9th Supreme Court of Appeals Penal Chamber. However, the dismissal came from the 16th Penal Chamber, as its jurisdiction covers case on organized crime.
Former Chief of Police Hanefi Avcı, who wrote a book on the controversial Gülen Movement, spent four years in prison as part of the OdaTV case, which is known as the media branch of the alleged Ergenekon terrorist organization.
Avcı wrote a book on the Gülen Movement's infiltration of the police force and claimed that Ali Fuat Yılmazer, a former director of the Istanbul Police Intelligence Department who was accused of forcing defendants in the Ergenekon trial to testify against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was "untouchable" and even then Istanbul Police Chief Celalettin Cerrah was not able to remove Yılmazer. Avcı implied that Yılmazer was assigned to the position of intelligence director by the Gülen Movement.
In the book, Avcı says members of the Gülen Movement went as far as intervening in intelligence activities by illegally raiding trucks used by the National Intelligence Organization (MİT). He said that they are influential in the judiciary and police and that it was too late for the government to stop their plot.
The book had ignited a huge debate in the country and was discussed in the media for weeks. The interior minister started an investigation following the publication of the book and then Eskişehir mayor, who is now the current Ankara Governor Mehmet Kılıçlar, had accused Avcı.
Avcı was not the only person who was unjustly treated by the Gülen Movement following their criticism of the movement. Intolerable of criticism, the movement, headed by the Pennsylvania-based imam Fethullah Gülen, is accused of imprisoning its critics through sham trials by prosecutors and judges linked to the group. Most notably, journalists Ahmet Şık, Nedim Şener and Avcı were jailed for releasing books critical of the Gülen Movement. Released after prolonged imprisonment without reasonable cause, Şık, Şener and Avcı claimed they were targeted by Gülen Movement-linked prosecutors and judges who leveled charges on the basis of being members of a terror network without any concrete evidence.
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