Berivan Aslan, an Austrian politician of Kurdish heritage, was allegedly targeted for assassination
Credit: Karo Pernegger
A suspected Turkish intelligence agent turned whistleblower claims he was tortured by Austrian authorities after reporting an alleged plot to assassinate a prominent Viennese politician.
Feyyaz Öztürk told the Telegraph he was stripped naked, severely beaten and given electric shocks by interrogators inside Vienna’s main prison despite the fact he had come forward and was willing to cooperate.
The 53-year-old Italian citizen handed himself in to Austrian authorities last year claiming he had been blackmailed into taking part in a plot to assassinate Berivan Aslan, a prominent politician of Kurdish heritage, by Turkey’s MIT intelligence agency.
He was set to go on trial on charges of spying for a foreign state this year but was released and deported before his case could come to court, after being deemed a “significant threat” to Austrian national security.
He now alleges he was tortured in Vienna’s Josefstadt prison.
“Two masked men came with an electric shock and they started to hit me while I was sleeping,” Mr Öztürk told the Telegraph by telephone from Tunisia. “They started to hit my head against the iron bed and later tried to break my fingers.”
"They started to hit my head against the iron bed and later tried to break my fingers," Feyyaz Öztürk told the Telegraph
Credit: Reuters
After being separated from his inmates and transferred to an isolation cell, he claims he was stripped. “I was totally naked. They hit my testicles. After that, I had blood in my urine for four days,” he said.
He claims he was held in a basement cell. “It was terrible, very dirty. It was kind of psychological torture,” he said.
Prosecutors denied being aware of allegations of mistreatment. “There are no investigations underway,” Nina Bussek, a spokesman for the prosecutors, said.
Daniel Mozga, Mr Öztürk’s Austrian lawyer, told the Telegraph he had seen an official police report which recorded his client’s allegation that he had been tortured while in custody. Mr Mozga said he could not confirm the allegation as he was not present at the time of the interrogation.
The Austrian interior ministry declined to comment on the allegations on the grounds the case is still sub judice.
Amnesty International said it has “no current information about torture in the narrow sense at Josefstadt prison or Austrian prisons in general.”
A spokesman said: “We can confirm that detention conditions at detention Josefstadt prison are inhumane, including violence among prisoners, insufficient protection of inmates by prison guards, self-harm and suicide attempts. Overcrowding is also a concrete problem.”
Official documents seen by the Telegraph indicate that Mr Öztürk was also questioned by American FBI agents during his time in Austrian custody. There is no indication that the FBI was involved in the alleged torture.
Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has cracked down hard on Kurdish opposition
Credit: Anadolu
According to Mr Mozga, the FBI questioned his client about the case of Metin Topuz, a local staff member at the US consulate-general in Istanbul who was sentenced to almost nine years in prison by a Turkish court last year on charges of aiding an “armed terror group”.
Mr Öztürk, who is of Turkish heritage, claims he was coerced by Turkish intelligence into giving false testimony against Mr Topuz in 2017.
He says he was never an officer in Turkey’s MIT intelligence service but worked as a freelance agent with a number of international intelligence services. He claims Austria’s BVT intelligence service tried to recruit him during his time in custody. The Austrian indictment against him described him as having a “remarkable insider knowledge” of the intelligence community.
His allegation that he had been blackmailed into taking part in a plot to assassinate Ms Aslan raised serious concerns over how far Turkey is prepared to go to silence its critics under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Ms Aslan was placed under police protection following the claims and said her movements had been severely curtailed.
In a police report leaked to the Austrian press during his time in custody, Mr Öztürk was said to have made similar allegations about plots against other public figures, including Peter Pilz, a senior Austrian politician and former party leader.
But Mr Öztürk now says he made up the other names under duress and claims only his original allegation of a plot against Ms Aslan was true.
His allegations of torture come at a difficult time for the Austrian government. Karl Nehammer, the interior minister, and the BVT domestic intelligence service have been under pressure over the failure to prevent an Islamist terror attack in Vienna last November in which four people were killed.
Armed police patrol the scene of the November 3rd terror attack in Vienna
Credit: AP
Last month the home of Gernot Blümel, the finance minister and a close ally of chancellor Sebastian Kurz, was raided by police in connection with an alleged corruption scandal.
Mr Öztürk claims he spent little time in Italy following his surprise deportation to Milan last December. He spoke to the Telegraph from Tunisia and claimed he was preparing to leave for the Chadian capital N’Djamena.
His trial was originally scheduled to take place in Vienna last month but indefinitely postponed following his deportation.
“There are proceedings where he could have been found guilty,” his lawyer, Mr Mozga, says. “I find it astonishing that he was deported overnight just before Christmas. I didn’t expect that.”
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