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.
