The former head of the Kosovo Intelligence Agency (AKI), Driton Gashi, has been sentenced to four years and eight months in prison for the illegal deportation of six Turkish citizens who had residence and work permits in Kosovo, in what is known as the “Gulenists” case.
At the Basic Court in Pristina, where the verdict was handed down, Gashi was found guilty of the criminal offense of “abuse of official position or authority”.
According to the indictment filed by the Special Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Kosovo, Gashi misused his official duties by not fulfilling his tasks within his authority, recommending the revocation of residence permits and the denial of one of them, “on the grounds that they allegedly posed a risk to national security, a fact that was not proven at all in the procedure conducted in accordance with the law”.
On the other hand, former director of the Department for Citizenship, Asylum, and Migration in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Valon Ramadani, and the former director of the Directorate for Migration and Foreigners within the Border Police, Rrahman Sylejmani, were acquitted of the charges.
The Special Prosecutor’s Office of the Republic of Kosovo had filed charges against these three former officials on February 24, 2021, under suspicion of “abuse of official position or authority and unlawful deprivation of liberty”.
The indictment was brought after the arrest of six Turkish citizens on March 29, 2018, in the early hours of the morning through a large-scale operation by the Kosovo Police and the Kosovo Intelligence Agency.
Their deportation was said to have been carried out through a coordinated action between intelligence services from Turkey and Kosovo.
The deportation followed the revocation of their residence permits, which the court later deemed to be illegal.
Out of the six Turkish citizens, three of them had permanent residence permits, namely Mustafa Erdem, Yusuf Karabina, and Karhaman Demirez, while two of them, Hasan Hüsein Demir and Cihan Ozkan, had temporary permits.
The families of the six Turkish citizens filed a lawsuit against the institutions of Kosovo in 2018 for the arbitrary arrest and detention of their family members.
Some of the families sought asylum in Kosovo, while others left for European countries.
The six Turkish citizens arrested in Kosovo and deported to Turkey in March 2018 were sentenced by the courts there to a total of 56 years and 7 months and a half in prison.
The Turkish courts mostly sentenced them to 8 years in prison, while one of them, Mustafa Erdem, the general director of the institution “Gulistan” in Kosovo, was sentenced to 15 years on June 5.
The “Mehmet Akif” schools in Kosovo belong to the Educational Institution “Gulistan”.
“Gulistan” has kindergartens, preschool institutions, elementary, and high schools throughout Kosovo.
It is believed that they are inspired by the Hizmet Movement of Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen, whom Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan blames for orchestrating the attempted coup in Turkey in 2016.
