UPDATE: Ion Bocan, spokesman of the Chisinau Court of Appeal, told Ziarul de Gardă that only the Galina Tufekci episode in the case of illegal expulsion of Turkish teachers will be returned to the Chisinau Prosecutor’s Office.

Original news…
The file on the illegal expulsion from Moldova of seven Turkish teachers, including former head of the Intelligence and Security Service (SIS) Vasile Botnari, which was unsealed last year, will be returned to the Chisinau Prosecutor’s Office. The decision was taken on Thursday, 16 February, by the magistrates of the Chisinau Court of Appeal, who admitted a request made by Galina Tufekci, the wife of one of the Turkish teachers.

In a comment to Ziarul de Gardă, Violina Moraru, spokeswoman for the Prosecutor General’s Office (PG), said that the appeal court admitted the complaint of the wife of one of the Turkish teachers (editor’s note: Galina Tufekci), declaring null and void the prosecutor’s order of January 16, 2020, which provided for the termination of her participation as an injured party.

Thus, the case will be returned to the Prosecutor’s Office of the municipality of Chisinau, for “removal of the violations of rights” against Galina Tufekci.

“By its decision of 16 February 2023, the Criminal College of the Chisinau Court of Appeals ruled on the three appeals filed in the case against the former director of SIS, two appeals being rejected as inadmissible, one appeal being withdrawn by the appellant (…). The reasoned decision will be delivered in a public hearing on 18 April 2023”, said Violina Moraru.

Vadim Vieru, the lawyer of the wife of one of the extradited Turkish teachers, says that “everything is moving quite slowly on this case”, but welcomed the ruling of the Chisinau Court of Appeal.

“The file was returned to the Prosecutor’s Office because the appeal court annulled the order of the prosecutor in the case, withdrawing her status as an injured party. A few years ago, in this case, she was recognised as an injured party, after which the file was sealed and her status was withdrawn without notifying her. The case was sent to trial, only on the part of the indictment against Mr Botnari and we already know that it was tried in secret, there were closed sessions and the sentence was pronounced (…). Mrs Tufekci appealed to me and we filed an appeal. In court we fought to unseal the file and we unsealed the file. It is public.

(…) The decision of the Chisinau Court of Appeal to annul the order withdrawing the status of injured party and to hand over the file to the Prosecutor’s Office in order to correct all the procedural errors that were committed against Ms Tufekci is welcome. The reasoned decision will not be published until April. And this means that the file will only be handed over to the Prosecutor’s Office then, together with the decision, unless it is appealed by one of the parties. The road is long, everything moves quite slowly. Rather, the Turkish teachers will serve their sentence in Turkey until our justice system moves (…)”, said Vadim Vieru.

On the morning of 6 September 2018, seven employees of the “Orizont” high school network were detained while leaving their homes to go to work and transported to Chisinau International Airport, where a plane, paid for by the Intelligence and Security Service (SIS), was waiting to take them to their home country, Turkey.

Five of the seven teachers applied for refugee status in Moldova because they feared reprisals in their home country, Turkey, based on their political views.

Shortly after their expulsion, the families of the teachers received letters with the decisions of the Migration and Asylum Office informing them that their asylum applications had been rejected and that they had been banned from entering Moldova for five years. The office claimed that the five teachers had met the legal requirements for granting asylum in Moldova, but found, however, on the basis of a secret memo received from the Moldovan intelligence services, that they posed a “threat to national security”.

In September and October 2018, the teachers’ representative, who was empowered by proxy by their wives, challenged the Bureau’s decisions in court.

In June 2019, the European Court of Human Rights condemned Moldova for violating the rights of Turkish citizens who were expelled in September 2018. Before the Court, the applicants stated that they were illegally detained and illegally handed over to the Turkish authorities. The Moldovan government acknowledged that the Turkish citizens had been detained, but stated before the Court that this was justified and that the applicants did not object to their expulsion to their country of origin.

Although the Government in Chisinau insisted that it was not aware of the applicants’ fears of being deported to Turkey, the Court notes that in their asylum applications the applicants clearly expressed their fear of being persecuted in Turkey. At the same time, in its decision of 4 September 2018 in relation to these asylum applications, the Migration and Asylum Office considered that the applicants’ fear of political persecution in Turkey was well founded.

For the illegal expulsion of the Turkish teachers, former SIS director Vasile Botnari was sentenced to a suspended sentence in September 2020 and was to pay a fine of 88 thousand lei.