A Turkish court on Thursday arrested former Lt. Gen. Metin İyidil two days after his release in a trial in which he faced charges related to a coup attempt on July 15, 2016, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
“Everything I did on the night of the coup was aimed at thwarting it,” İyidil said in court during his first questioning after his detention.
The former head of the Land Forces Training and Doctrine Command (EDOK) had been handed down an aggravated life sentence by a court of first instance that found him guilty of “attempting to overthrow the constitutional order through violence,” as part of an investigation into the 2016 coup attempt.
He was later freed pending a retrial after an appeals court overturned the verdict.
Meanwhile, the members of the appeals court who vacated the lower court’s decision were suddenly reassigned without explanation to other provinces by the Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSK), according to a report by the Hürriyet daily.
The HSK has also launched an internal investigation into the former members of the chamber.
In addition, three suspects have been detained for allegedly plotting to help İyidil flee the country.
The police were reportedly tipped off as they detected İyidil leaving his residence and relocating to another house in Ankara in a move they found unusual.
The suspects, who were identified only by their initials, were lawyer A.K., İyidil’s nephew B.Ö. and his nephew’s spouse E.Ö.
Hürriyet reported that B.Ö. is also the son of Nihat Özdemir, the chairman of the Turkish Football Federation (TFF) and a prominent businessman known for having close ties to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.