{"id":31467,"date":"2019-02-02T02:22:46","date_gmt":"2019-02-02T02:22:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=31467"},"modified":"2019-02-02T02:22:46","modified_gmt":"2019-02-02T02:22:46","slug":"saudis-uae-yemen-ask-un-to-pressure-houthis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=31467","title":{"rendered":"Saudis, UAE, Yemen ask UN to pressure Houthis"},"content":{"rendered":"<div readability=\"83\">\n<p>\nANKARA: A Turkish court on Friday accepted an indictment charging a local employee of the US Consulate in Istanbul with espionage and attempting to overthrow the government, state media reported.<\/p>\n<p>\nMetin Topuz, who liaised with the US Drug Enforcement Agency for the American mission, is accused of having links to US-based Turkish preacher Fethullah Gulen.<\/p>\n<p>\nAnkara alleges that Gulen ordered a failed coup in 2016, but he denies the claims.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe Istanbul court, which accepted the prosecutor\u2019s indictment issued last month, ordered Topuz to remain in jail, state news agency Anadolu said. He has been in custody since September 2017.<\/p>\n<p>\nTopuz\u2019s trial will begin on March 26 and the first hearing will last three days. He faces life in jail if found guilty.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe consulate employee is suspected of having contacts with former police officers and a prosecutor on the run accused of links with the Gulen movement, Anadolu reported.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe agency added that the indictment claimed Topuz had \u201cvery intense contacts\u201d with former police chiefs involved in a 2013 probe into corruption allegations that affected government officials at the time.<\/p>\n<p>\nAnkara has dismissed that investigation as an attempted \u201cjudicial coup\u201d against the government by the Gulen movement.<\/p>\n<p>\nTopuz had been at the center of a visa row between Ankara and Washington in late 2017 after his arrest.<\/p>\n<p>\nTurkey-US relations have been strained in recent years over multiple issues including the US refusing to extradite Gulen.<\/p>\n<p>\nThere was also a bitter row last summer over the detention of an American pastor, but tensions eased after his release in October.<\/p>\n<p>\nThe court\u2019s decision comes a day after a judge in the southeastern city of Mardin convicted a former local employee of the US consulate in Adana, southern Turkey.<\/p>\n<p>\nHamza Ulucay was found guilty of helping outlawed Kurdish militants, and sentenced to four years and six months in jail.<\/p>\n<p>\nBut the Mardin court ruled he be released because of the time he had already served in jail since March 2017.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>ANKARA: A Turkish court on Friday accepted an indictment charging a local employee of the US Consulate in Istanbul with espionage and attempting to overthrow the government, state media reported. Metin Topuz, who liaised with the US Drug Enforcement Agency for the American mission, is accused of having links to US-based Turkish preacher Fethullah Gulen.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":31468,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}