A Turkish court issued an arrest warrant Thursday for a Gülen Movement-linked former director at Turkey's Telecommunications Directorate (TİB), accusing him of espionage.
İlhan Elieyioğlu, the former head of Information Systems at the (TİB), was questioned the same day by a prosecutor in Ankara about other charges besides espionage, including "destroying the integrity of the state and irregular eavesdropping on encrypted and ordinary phones." Following a four-hour interrogation, Elieyioğlu was sent to court for arrest.
Earlier on Thursday, a court ordered the arrest of four people and the release of seven others out of 11 recently held over alleged illegal wiretapping by members of the Gülen Movement. All those held were from the country's Telecommunications Directorate.
On Wednesday, police detained 26 suspects, sending 11 of them to court for arrest. Operations started after it was confirmed that encrypted phones belonging to senior Turkish leaders had been compromised.
In total, 363 incidents of illegal wiretapping of the aforementioned individuals have been confirmed, most of which were carried out between Dec. 17 and Dec. 25, 2013, when an anti-graft probe targeted a number of high-profile figures, including the sons of three former government ministers and leading Turkish businessmen.
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