Emin Aslan, who served in several high-ranking positions in the National Police Department’s intelligence, smuggling and organized crime units, appeared in court on Friday along with 23 other suspects, 15 of whom are jailed.
Aslan claimed in his testimony that a group of people within the National Police Department was illegally wiretapping phones including those of the Milliyet daily.
Saying that the National Police Department decided to monitor phone conversations using IEMI numbers, which do not require any information about the line owner as opposed to monitoring conversations based on telephone numbers registered under a particular individual’s name, Aslan said his mobile phone and his office phone at the National Police Department were wiretapped in this way.
Aslan said the phones of the Milliyet daily were also wiretapped based on IEMI numbers because the daily was running stories investigating the real culprits at National Police Department behind the Hrant Dink murder.
Dink, a Turkish-Armenian journalist, was killed by an ultranationalist youth in 2007. Three institutions, the National Police Department, the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) and the Gendarmerie, have the authority to legally wiretap phones in Turkey; however, a court decision is needed for those institutions to wiretap a phone. When a court decision is issued for the wiretapping of a phone, it needs to be approved by the Telecommunications Directorate (TİB). Aslan was released at Friday’s hearing.
