Bellinzona trial over espionage for Turkey

The Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona opened proceedings today against a 45-year-old Turkish national who has worked for years as a pizza maker in Biel. According to the Federal Prosecutor's Office, between July 2018 and May 2019 the man sent 59 messages to Turkish intelligence services and other security authorities. The messages contained information about people and meetings linked to the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers' Party. The PKK is not a banned organisation in Switzerland. In Turkey, the European Union and the United States, however, it is considered a terrorist group. The charge is political espionage. The defendant denies it.

The case goes back to March 2019. The brother of the defendant's employer flew to Turkey for a wedding and was arrested at the airport. He was later convicted of propaganda in favour of the PKK. A mobile phone number appeared in the Turkish police files: it belonged to the pizza maker. The pizzeria owner discovered this by dialling the number.

In May 2019, the owner and other Kurds confronted the man in the basement of the restaurant. They beat him, threatened him, took his phone and locked him in the cold room for about twenty minutes. Four men have already been definitively convicted for these acts. Today, the man who was then the victim sits as the defendant.

Redacted files and disputed evidence

The court has heavily redacted the indictment and held part of the hearing behind closed doors at the Prosecutor's request. According to the judges, this data forms the very core of the case: publishing it would mean disclosing information the law intends to protect.

The evidence rests mainly on data from a mobile phone that private individuals forcibly took from the defendant and later handed to police. The defence argues this data cannot be used in the proceedings. The prosecution counters that the defendant, then considered the victim, did not object to the phone being analysed. The court will have to decide whether the evidence is admissible, since the law allows exceptions for serious offences.

The Federal Intelligence Service (FIS) considers the risk of espionage in Switzerland to be high. The greatest dangers come from Russia and China. Russian agents often operate under diplomatic cover, for instance around the United Nations in Geneva. China, by contrast, uses operatives without diplomatic status, who monitor the Taiwanese, Tibetan and Uyghur communities, Falun Gong followers and pro-democracy activists, along with those who support them in Switzerland.

Already in 2020 the FIS reported increased Turkish activity among nationals in Switzerland. Trials, however, remain rare: for foreign policy reasons, agents with diplomatic cover are usually asked discreetly to leave the country. According to the FIS, such cases put Switzerland's sovereignty and the safety of its residents at stake, including people of foreign origin.