After Turkey arrests Kosovar man over Mossad ties, lawyer asserts he is innocent
Representative for Liridon Rexhepi’s family says suspect and his relatives are ‘shocked’ but ready to cooperate with probe into alleged money transfers to Israeli spy agency
PRISTINA, Kosovo — A lawyer representing the family of a man from Kosovo who was arrested in Turkey for allegedly transferring money to Mossad operatives there insisted on Wednesday that the suspect is innocent and offered the family’s cooperation in the investigation.
The suspect, identified as Liridon Rexhepi, entered Turkey on August 25, and was detained last Friday and formally arrested on Tuesday, Turkey security sources said. The sources said he had confessed during interrogation that he conducted the money transfers.
Since January, Turkish authorities have detained dozens of people on charges of collecting data on individuals, mostly Palestinians residing in Turkey, for Israeli intelligence.
Israel has not commented on the arrests in Turkey.
In the Kosovar capital of Pristina, lawyer Arianit Koci said Rexhepi’s family is “shocked by this arrest” and convinced that he has “nothing to do with these charges.”
“Both the family and Liridon are ready to fully cooperate with authorities,” he told The Associated Press, adding that “due to the sensitivity of the case, for the moment there is no information that I can share with the public.”
“We are convinced that our brother is innocent because we have never been involved in the above-mentioned claims, neither we as a family nor Liridon,” Koci wrote on Facebook.
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, sparked by the terror group’s slaughter of 1,200 people and kidnapping of 251 in southern Israel on October 7, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been one of the strongest critics of the Jewish state. He has also praised the Hamas terror group as a liberation group.
In May, Turkey halted all trade with Israel and has also applied to participate in a genocide case against Israel at an international court.
Erdogan has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza, called for it to be punished in international courts, and criticized Western nations for backing Israel. He has compared Israel to Nazi Germany, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
Turkey and Israel normalized ties in 2022 by reappointing ambassadors following years of tensions. But those links quickly deteriorated after Hamas’s October 7 invasion.
