A Turkish lieutenant colonel who had been assigned to NATO headquarters and who was abducted and tortured by agents of the Turkish intelligence service continued to relate the horrific details of the torture in an additional petition filed with Turkish authorities.
Earlier Nordic Monitor had documented that Lt. Col. Ersoy Öz was subjected to torture by operatives of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) for days. Lt. Col. Öz, who had worked as an intelligence planning officer at NATO military headquarters between 2010 and 2013 and had pursued graduate studies in California from 2002 to 2004, was kidnapped by MIT agents and subjected to severe torture after a July 2016 coup attempt in Turkey according to his newly discovered petition in which he repeated his request for a through medical examination of the marks of torture still visible on his body a year after the fact.
He was appointed to head the Turkish brigade deployed to Qatar on May 13, 2016. After the coup attempt, he was abducted by MIT agents near an airbase in Ankara in July 2016 and brought to a black site in Ankara’s Yenimahalle district run by MIT and subjected to severe torture there.
With a petition addressed to the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office from the Sincan maximum security prison outside Ankara, where he has been incarcerated ever since, Öz repeated his request for a medical examination of the marks of torture. Early in the morning of July 16, he was kidnapped by persons who said they were government officials and taken to a soundproof room at an unknown location to be severely tortured there.
“My various body parts including my genitals were subjected to electric shock. I was beaten and my face was covered by wet towels and cloths to such an extent that I was unable to breathe. Some 150 marks of injuries/burns caused by the torture are still visible on various parts of my body. In those parts subjected to electric shock I still suffer from muscle pains and a loss of sensation. As a result of beatings, I am suffering from an inguinal hernia for which I will have surgery at Ankara Numune Hospital. Further, there are still lingering pains in my spine, penis and urinary tract and other body parts where I was beaten,” he said in his petition.
His previous petitions were left unanswered by the authorities. Noting that no official action had been taken on his previous two previous petitions in 2016 wherein he conveyed his request to testify again because he had given his statement under duress during his interrogation in police custody, he repeated his request for a through medical examination of the traces of torture.
“My lawyer, Hasan Egemen Mağat, filed two separate petitions dated September 23, 2016 and October 18, 2016, respectively, with the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office with a view to establishing the torture. Yet, no action has been taken. … Therefore … I kindly request to be medically examined so that the still visible marks [of torture] and damage to my body be established with a medical report,” he wrote. This petition also proved to have been of no avail.
Lt. Col. Ersoy Öz’s petition filed with the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office:
