An indictment by the Chief Prosecutor’s Office in Ankara asks prison terms of between 35 years and life for Önder Sığırcıkoğlu, a former intelligence personnel accused of abducting two Syrian defectors and handing them over to the Baathist regime in Syria.
Sığırcıkoğlu was captured on the Syrian-Lebanese border, the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) announced in March, in a joint operation with the post-Baathist Syrian intelligence.
He was accused of kidnapping Hussein Harmoush and Mustafa Kassoum, two commanders of the opposition Free Syrian Army, at the height of the Syrian civil war and handing them over to the oppressive Assad regime. Harmoush later died of torture by the Baathist regime. Sığırcıkoğlu was sentenced in 2013 to 20 years in prison for "deprivation of liberty through force, threat, or deceit," but he escaped from Osmaniye prison in southern Türkiye, where he was held in 2014. Subsequent investigation discovered that suspects linked to the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) helped him escape.
The indictment against him, released on Wednesday, charges Sığırcıkoğlu with political espionage. It says the suspect lived in several regions of Syria between 2014 and 2024, under the protection of the Assad regime and supplied information about MIT to Russian intelligence during that period.
In the indictment, it was stated that between the years 2014–2016, the defendant acted in concert with Mihraç Ural, the ringleader of the THKP-C/Acilciler terrorist group, and Yusuf Nazik, the perpetrator of the terror attack in the southern Turkish town of Reyhanlı, who was captured in 2018, and that during that period, he conducted a black propaganda campaign against Türkiye by giving interviews.
The indictment says that following the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, Sığırcıkoğlu first fled to Lebanon, then to Russia, and after living in Russia for a while, returned to Lebanon, where he was captured at the Syrian-Lebanese border.
In the indictment, which states that the defendant transferred information to foreign intelligence services that should have remained confidential for the security, internal, and external political interests of the State of the Republic of Türkiye, the following findings were included: "It has been understood that Sığırcıkoğlu began working within MIT in 1993, worked at this institution until 2012, and following the outbreak of the Syrian civil war, was assigned to the refugee camps in the Yayladağı district of Hatay. It was determined that the defendant began transferring the information of Assad regime opponent refugees, which should have remained confidential for the interests of the state, along with institutional studies and MIT reports to the (Assad) regime intelligence, using the convenience provided by his duty to collect them.”
“It was determined that the defendant recorded his meeting with a Syrian tribal leader using a pen capable of audio and video recording and delivered it to Syrian intelligence, and that he ensured that Free Syrian Army (FSA) commanders Hormoush and Kassoum, with whom he established contact due to his duties, were abducted from Hatay in 2011 and delivered to the Syrian regime. It was established that while the suspect, whose actions contrary to Türkiye's international positioning led the Assad regime to display force against opponents and put psychological pressure on refugees, was serving his sentence resulting from this incident, he took advantage of the travel permit granted in 2014 to report to an open prison, fled to Syria, and was welcomed there by regime intelligence."
In the indictment, which states that Sığırcıkoğlu operated as an intelligence operative in various parts of Syria using the means allocated to him by the Assad regime after fleeing to Syria, it was reported that the defendant gave various information about MIT that should have remained confidential and, aiming to prove his loyalty to the regime, disclosed the names of some MIT personnel in an interview he gave to a journalist.
