A judge dismissed on Friday a Turkish official’s claim that a Pennsylvania-based Turkish cleric is behind a banker’s trial in an Iran economic sanctions conspiracy, saying it was an “illogical foreign conspiracy theory.”
U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman’s remarks came while rejecting a defense mistrial request after a former Turkish police official, Huseyin Korkmaz, claimed he escaped from Turkey because he had discovered government corruption which resulted in his own arrest, citing fears for his safety.
Berman criticized a lawyer of the defense, saying he was joining ‘’a rather far-fetched conspiracy theory bandwagon’’ by bringing up the U.S.-based cleric in his questioning of the police official, Associated Press reports. The judge said the tactic employed by the defense was “unpersuasive and borderline unprofessional.”
Meanwhile, Turkey’s justice minister told his U.S. counterpart that Korkmaz is wanted by Ankara and should be swiftly returned, Reuters reports.
“It has been requested by our judicial offices that (Korkmaz) be temporarily arrested with the aim of being repatriated, based on alleged crimes. We expect that the request is met on positive terms and the previously mentioned person be repatriated as soon as possible,” Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul said in a letter to U.S. Justice Secretary Jeff Sessions, according to sources at his ministry.
According to the Turkish government, followers of the U.S.-based cleric Fetullah Gulen are behind the case. Korkmaz said that he feared he would be tortured if he returned to Turkey, where he led an investigation involving Turkish officials and Mehmet Hakan Atilla, the bank executive on trial in New York. Prosecutors accused Atilla, an executive at Turkey’s state-owned Halkbank, of working with Turkish-Iranian gold trader Reza Zarrab and others to help Iran evade U.S. sanctions through fraudulent gold and food transactions.
Atilla pleaded not guilty, while Zarrab pleaded guilty and testified for U.S. prosecutors. Nine people have been charged by U.S. prosecutors with conspiring to help Iran evade sanctions through fraudulent gold and food transactions, but only Zarrab and Atilla have been arrested.
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