Turkey has added exiled Fatah leader Mohammed Dahlan to its most-wanted terrorist list, with a $1.7m reward for help tracking him down, the Turkish interior ministry announced on Friday.
The ministry said that search and detention warrants have been issued for Dahlan on charges of perpetrating the 2016 coup attempt against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan with the followers of exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, which the Turkish government designates as a terror group.
The charges against Dahlan, according to the statement, are as follows:
“Forcibly attempting to change the constitutional order, exposing state secrets for espionage purposes, obtaining state secrets for political or military espionage, revealing secret information related to state’s security or political interest, and international espionage.”
Dahlan has previously denied the allegations of involvement in the coup attempt.
In September, Dahlan dropped a libel case against Middle East Eye Editor David Hearst over MEE’s reporting of the allegations hours before he was legally bound to disclose all electronic documents and material relevant to the case.
MEE has contacted Dahlan’s lawyers for comment.
Last month, Turkish Interior Ministry Suleyman Soylu told a Turkish newspaper that Ankara had been making preparations to add Dahlan to the most-wanted terrorist list, dubbed the “red list.”
A Turkish official familiar with the issue told MEE then on condition of anonymity that a Turkish prosecutor was readying an indictment against Dahlan.
“It would be a comprehensive paperwork. It would include lots of things you see on the media and his insults against Turkey. It is in the pipeline,” the official said.
‘He is an Israeli agent’
Dahlan, a former head of Fatah’s security forces in Gaza, was accused in 2016 of involvement in the failed coup attempt against Erdogan in his alleged role as a fixer for the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed.
Anonymous Turkish sources had previously accused Dahlan of transferring money to coup plotters on behalf of the Emirati government.
In April, a Turkish police report obtained by MEE said authorities caught two UAE spies allegedly connected to Dahlan who were spying on Muslim Brotherhood and Palestinian targets in Turkey.
Last month, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu accused Dahlan of being a “terrorist ringleader”.
“He is an Israeli agent. That’s why he has fled. We know that [UAE and Saudi Arabia] have tried to replace Abu Mazen (Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas) with him. We all see this,” he said.
Earlier this month, Dahlan told MBC Masr that Erdogan was stealing gold from the Central Bank of Libya and had been providing a safe haven for slain Islamic State leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi in northern Syria.
“Erdogan is delusional and mentally unstable, wishing to resurrect the Ottoman Empire in order to occupy the Arab world,” he reportedly said.
