Kenya dragged into ICC filing on Turkey's 'crimes against opponents'
Exiled Turkish Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen at his residence in Saylorsburg, Pennsylvania. His nephew, identified as Selahaddin Gulen, was abducted in Nairobi on May 3, 2021.
International rights lawyers have asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate alleged crimes against humanity by the Turkish government targeting opponents around the world, including an incident that occurred in Kenya in 2021.
Selahaddin Gulen, the nephew of Turkish dissident and influential cleric Fethullah Gulen, was dramatically captured by Turkish intelligence officers in Nairobi on May 3, 2021.
The case submitted to the Hague-based court alleges torture, enforced disappearance, wrongful imprisonment and persecution of some 200,000 opponents of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Turkey is not a signatory to the ICC, but the lawyers say Turkish officials can be investigated for alleged crimes against 1,300 victims on the territory of 45 countries that are members.
Belgium's former deputy prime minister Johan Vande Lanotte, a law professor involved in the submission, told a press conference in The Hague he was hopeful the ICC would take up the case.
"Important members of the (Turkish) government cannot deny they are responsible, because they proclaimed their responsibility proudly," he said.
While any person or group can file a complaint to the ICC prosecutor, he is not obliged to launch an investigation.
The complaint was submitted in February but only unveiled publicly on Wednesday after a delay because of the devastating February 6 earthquake in Turkey and Syria.
"Turkish officials have committed crimes against humanity against hundreds of thousands of opponents of the Erdogan regime," said the communication submitted to ICC prosecutor Karim Khan.
The 1,300 cases highlighted in the complaint all involve people linked by the Turkish government to Gulen, a former ally of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who the president blames for a failed military coup in 2016.
It details 17 alleged forced disappearances in which people were abducted from Albania, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Gabon, Kenya, Moldova, Mongolia and Switzerland and taken to Turkey.
Abducted and extradited
Turkish intelligence officials kidnapped Gulen's nephew from Nairobi as he headed to the Nairobi Interpol office located at the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) headquarters along Kiambu Road to clear his name of criminal charges.
Reports at the time indicated that his car was blocked just a stone’s throw away from the DCI headquarters before unknown men ordered him into another car and sped off.
Selahaddin had been battling plans to extradite him to Turkey on allegations that he was wanted for child molestation.
His family, however, insisted he was being targeted due to his ties to his uncle.
The younger Gulen had even filed a case at the Kiambu Law Courts challenging his extradition.
Selahaddin had arrived in Kenya on a tourist visa in October 2020.
