Journalist Tolga Şardan has been questioned by prosecutors in Ankara over his reporting on the crash of a plane carrying a high-level Libyan military delegation, according to the Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA).
Şardan said in his report that a Cypriot flight attendant who had arrived in Turkey with the Libyan delegation but did not board the return flight due to a change in the flight crew was detained at her hotel at the request of the National Intelligence Organization (MİT). He said she was questioned by Ankara police and later released after investigators failed to obtain concrete information, while investigations into her connections were ongoing.
A journalist for the TR24 news website, Şardan testified on Thursday as part of an investigation launched by the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office on accusations of “violating the confidentiality of an investigation” in connection with his report published on January 13.
The crash occurred on December 23, with a private jet carrying Libyan Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Mohammed Ali al-Haddad and members of a military delegation going down shortly after takeoff in Ankara’s Haymana district, leaving no survivors.
Al-Haddad was returning home from an official visit to Turkey at the invitation of Turkish Chief of General Staff Gen. Selçuk Bayraktaroğlu.
According to Expression Interrupted, a press freedom monitoring group, 28 journalists are currently behind bars in Turkey. The country’s deteriorating media landscape was further pointed out in the 2025 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), where it was ranked 159th out of 180 nations.
