Turkey announces arrests of two alleged UAE intelligence officers in Istanbul

Covert surveillance photograph of two UAE nationals arrested in Turkey on espionage charges (TRT Haber)

Turkish authorities have announced the arrest of two men believed to be intelligence officers for the United Arab Emirates; the two have already confessed to recruiting local informants, according to Reuters. The news agency said Turkish counterintelligence officials suspect that at least one of the suspects may be involved in a spy operation that relates to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist who was killed last October inside the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul by a 15-member team of Saudi intelligence officers.

Last Friday, Reuters cited an anonymous “senior Turkish official” who said that both men are Emirati nationals and that one of them arrived in Turkey just days after Khashoggi’s murder. He was allegedly monitored by Turkish counterintelligence for a period of six months and his activities led investigators to the second man. The latter is believed to have traveled to Turkey in order “to help his colleague with the workload”, said Reuters. Turkey’s state-owned news agency, TRT Haber, published Turkish police photographs of the two men in custody, but did not name them. It also published covert surveillance photographs of the two men, presumably taken by Turkish counterintelligence. A source told Reuters that Turkish counterintelligence officials had entered an Istanbul apartment used by the two men as a safe house, where they found an encrypted computer “in a hidden compartment”. The source added that the two UAE nationals had undergone several hours of interrogation, during which they had confessed that they were employees of the UAE intelligence service. They had also admitted to recruiting local residents as informants. Their activities and targets were consistent with intelligence operations aimed at exiled Arab nationals and students living in Turkey, said the source.

The unnamed Turkish official told Reuters that authorities had amassed “extensive evidence” on “covert activities on Turkish soil” by the two men, and described the case against them as “airtight”. However, when contacted by Reuters, Turkey’s Ministry of Interior declined to comment on the arrests. A spokesman for Istanbul’s Police Department confirmed that a police operation against the two Emirati nationals was ongoing. Turkish media reports on Saturday said that the two men had appeared before a court in Istanbul and that they were being kept in custody on charges of espionage against the Turkish state.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 22 April 2019 | Permalink