The local police in Bosnia Herzegovina on Tuesday detained a Turkish dissident with a permanent residency in the country, reportedly to extradite the Erdogan foe to Turkey.
Fatih Keskin, the principal of Una-Sana College, an institute operating within the Richmond Park Schools Group, was invited to a police station in Bihać city by the Ministry of Interior of the Una-Sana Canton, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency (AA) reported citing local media.
Soon after being detained, the Gulen movement affiliated teacher was transferred to a detention center for migrants in the capital city of Sarajevo to start an extradition process, AA said.
The move came hours after Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan hinted at new operations to capture Gulenists living in Europe before he left for London to attend a summit.
Ankara accuses Fethullah Gulen, a US-based cleric in a self-exile, for orchestrating the 2016 coup attempt, a claim that strongly denied by the movement.
The Department of Foreign Affairs of the Ministry of Security of Bihac revoked the residency permit of four Turkish nationals in September, following the Turkish government’s extradition request according to AA. The case of four Erdogan dissidents was taken to a local court then.
His lawyer Nedim Ademovic confirmed that Fatih Keskin, who has been living in the country for more than 14 years with his family, was detained by Bosnian authorities.
Keskin told Bold on the phone that he was being kept in a detention center in Sarajevo where refugees are held for deportation.
“I was invited to the police station at around 10 am in Bihac and I was told I violated the rules in Bosnia, hence my residency was revoked. When I asked which rules I violated, the officers said they did not even know,” Keskin said.
He told that two police officers forcibly transferred him to Sarajevo refusing to show any official paper and denying him time to meet his lawyer.
“They did not let me call my lawyer. ‘If you resist, we will handcuff you,’ the two police officers told me.”
He is concerned for possible deportation back to his home country where a mass crackdown has been targeting some 500 thousand Gulenists since 2016.
In March 2018, Turkish intelligence service (MIT) detained six Turkish nationals with the cooperation of Kosovar authorities and they were taken to Turkey where they were arrested.
As of March 2019, a total of 107 people with alleged links to the movement have been brought to Turkey since the failed 2016 coup, following extradition requests for 504 people sent to 91 countries, the state-run Anadolu Agency (AA) reported citing Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul.