Critical phones in Sinan Ateş case sent to the US: Court issues letter of request

In order to shed light on the assassination, it is necessary to crack the passwords of two phones to uncover critical phone calls and messages.

Journalist İsmail Saymaz reported on the developments regarding the cracking of the passwords on the phones during a live broadcast on Halk TV.

Saymaz made the following statements:

"Another hearing of the Sinan Ateş case will be held tomorrow. The prosecution will announce the sentences it is requesting for the defendants tomorrow. For the case to reach a verdict, certain conditions must be met. One of them is the fulfillment of the court's requests.

The court had approved and fulfilled two requests in the previous hearing. One of these was to obtain the passwords for the mobile phones of two detained and critical defendants in the file and to reveal the contents of these mobile phones. One of these defendants is lawyer Serdar Öktem, who was an MHP-affiliated lawyer.

He had also served as a deputy chairman of the Ülkü Ocakları (Grey Wolves). Öktem drew attention with the circulation network of his car on the day the Sinan Ateş murder was committed and the fact that this vehicle belonged to the MHP. According to one allegation, Serdar Öktem helped Eray Özyağcı, the murderer of Sinan Ateş, hide in Bolu on the day the murder was committed.

Serdar Öktem was arrested, and his mobile phone was seized after his arrest. He replied, 'I had Covid and I don't remember my password, I don't know it.' However, he stated in the hearing that he had 6 phones. He knew all of these phones by heart, but he did not know the password of the last phone he used. This created suspicion in the court. Meanwhile, Serdar Öktem is also the lawyer for the instigator Doğukan Çep.

PASSWORDS WILL BE CRACKED AND CORRESPONDENCE OBTAINED

The other person is Ankara Murder Bureau Chief Mustafa Ensar Aykal. Aykal had a special friendship with Tolgahan Demirbaş, who smuggled Eray Özyağcı from Ankara to Istanbul. Before the murder, upon Tolgahan Demirbaş's request, he had transferred the information of his lawyer Ali Yücel to him.

At the same time, he had asked for information by giving Sinan Ateş's number to Tolgahan Demirbaş. There is no continuation of the 'Yes, chief, they have pulled the trigger' conversation, but it was determined that Ateş's home address was in the notes section of the phone after this conversation. According to the indictment, it is alleged that Ensar Aykal provided this number. Ensar Aykal does not accept this.

Following these, the court wrote a letter of request to send these two phones to Apple in the US. In this letter, it was requested that the passwords of both Serdar Öktem's and Mustafa Ensar Aykal's phones be cracked, the correspondence be obtained, and evidence linked to the murder be secured along with the correspondence."

News Source: 12punto