Moldova To Grill Secret Service Chiefs Over Expulsions

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By Madalin Necsutu

The government says it will summon intelligence chiefs for a grilling before parliament, as concern grows over the sudden detention and expulsion of a number of Turkish teachers.

Moldova’s Prime Minister, Pavel Filip, and the Speaker of Parliament, Andrian Candu, both members of the ruling Democratic Party, on Thursday summoned the heads of the country’s intelligence service for a hearing in parliament.

The government asked the Security and Intelligence Service, SIS, to provide further information on the case of the detention and expulsion of a number of Turkish nationals working for a private high-school chain linked to the Turkish exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen.

“We have called for parliamentary hearings in the case of the expulsion from the country of seven foreign citizens. It is very important to make sure that human rights, national and international norms have been respected in this case,” Candu said.

On Friday, President Igor Dodon joined the initiative, and also asked for evidence from SIS, after earlier on Thursday accusing the media of double standards in the matter, referring to the expulsion of Russian diplomats from Moldova over the poisonings in Salisbury, England.

However, some political analysts said the latest move was just smoke and mirrors, as the top Moldovan officials had long known about the Turkish regime’s demands for Moldova to hand over so-called Gulenists.

“Parliament and the government have asked SIS to justify its extradition decision? Just formal hearings? Since when has the SIS been acting on its own?”, analyst Igor Munteanu asked rhetorically on Facebook, stressing that SIS only acts on political orders.

In May 2017, on a visit to Chisinau, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim urged Moldova to close down the Horizont high-school network on account of its alleged links to the Gulen movement, which Ankara blames for a failed coup in 2016.

Moldovan Prime Minister Pavel Filip did not agree to, or reject, the request back then.

“If there is evidence, of course, we expect Turkish experts to come and contact our Intelligence and Security Service or the Interior Ministry, so we can address this issue legally,” Filip said on May 5, 2017, in Chisinau.

Meanwhile, the EU Commissioner for European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement, Johannes Hahn, has reminded the Chisinau authorities to respect human rights.

“I expect the Moldovan government and all authorities to respect rule of law and all established judicial procedures,” Hahn said on Twitter.

A group of seven members of the European Parliament have written a joint letter to Moldova’s government urging it “to stop immediately the abusive extraditions”, noting that Moldova “is a country on European roadmap.”

Amnesty International’s Chisinau branch has also criticized the decision to detain and expel the Turkish nationals from the country.

Students from the Horizont private high-schools chain in Moldova have launched an online campaign for their professors, called “Teachers, not terrorists!”

The case of the expelled Turkish professors has been submitted also to the European Court of Human Rights, ECHR, to be examined in an urgent procedure.

Balkan Insight

The Balkan Insight (formerly the Balkin Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN) is a close group of editors and trainers that enables journalists in the region to produce in-depth analytical and investigative journalism on complex political, economic and social themes. BIRN emerged from the Balkan programme of the Institute for War & Peace Reporting, IWPR, in 2005. The original IWPR Balkans team was mandated to localise that programme and make it sustainable, in light of changing realities in the region and the maturity of the IWPR intervention. Since then, its work in publishing, media training and public debate activities has become synonymous with quality, reliability and impartiality. A fully-independent and local network, it is now developing as an efficient and self-sustainable regional institution to enhance the capacity for journalism that pushes for public debate on European-oriented political and economic reform.

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