According to Uslu, no meaningful evidence against S.D., who guarded the Prime Minister’s Office from 2008 to 2012, had been obtained during the investigation launched at that time.
Noting that the pro-government media raised the claims of bugging devices again following the breaking of a graft probe in December of last year, Uslu said: “In December 2011, which is the date the bugging device was found in the prime minister’s
Uslu’s sources in the Prime Ministry, from whom he claims to have obtained the information about S.D., believe that the revival of the bugging investigation is related to S.D.’s assignment in İstanbul, “because it is said that at the time the bugging device was discovered in the prime minister’s study, S.D. had been assigned to protect Yasin al-Qadi, that he [S.D.] brought al-Qadi in a private jet from [Saudi] Arabia to Turkey, that he closely accompanied al-Qadi during his six-month long stay in İstanbul, that he [S.D.] was a close witness to all the important talks al-Qadi attended, including one with the undersecretary of MİT [National Intelligence Organization],” Uslu said.
Noting that S.D. is among those people the prosecutor of the corruption investigation might call on for a statement pertaining to that investigation, Uslu said it is claimed that this is an effort to stop S.D. from providing information about Qadi, who was removed from the UN’s terrorist list in October 2012 but remains a “specially designated global terrorist” by the US Treasury, by involving him in the bugging investigation instead.
According to the same sources that Uslu cited earlier, it is meaningful that Qadi was brought to Turkey by private jet and hosted in a special way at a time when the clashes in Syria were intensifying, towards the end of 2011, and that S.D., who is the closest witness of Qadi’s two known meetings with MİT head Hakan Fidan, is linked to the bugging investigation.
Noting that it is said the prime minister almost never used the office in his Ankara home, where a listening device was said to have been discovered in December of 2011, Uslu wrote, “What is even more interesting is: It is being said that Mustafa Varank, an advisor to the prime minister, has the only key to this office, and that entry into that office is completely under the control of Varank.”
According to information gained from sources within the Prime Ministry, Uslu said, MİT Undersecretary Fidan and his team gave a presentation to the prime minister about 20 days before the bugging device was discovered. Allegedly MİT wanted to take over the task of protecting Erdoğan, maintaining that there were gaps in his security, but the prime minister did not agree at the time.
The discovery of a bugging device in Erdoğan’s unused office shortly after the MİT briefing has raised questions in circles close to the Prime Ministry, Uslu said, about whether MİT performed such an operation in order to take over the prime minister’s security detail.
According to sources close to the Prime Ministry, a bugging device would serve no purpose in Erdoğan’s home study, since he never used that study. “This [placing of a bugging device] would be a ploy designed to create the impression, ‘There are gaps in the prime minister’s security,’” his sources believe, Uslu said.
In the first investigation conducted after the discovery of the bugging devices, no conclusion was reached. Many police officers gave evidence as part of the investigation, but no proof was found of who had planted the devices, Uslu said, based on sources close to the Prime Ministry.
The investigation was apparently reinitiated after the graft probe. Another police officer, A.T, who is claimed to have been among those suspected in the bugging investigation, was not called, as a witness or a suspect, to give testimony in the administrative or judicial investigations, Uslu’s sources maintained.