We have evidence that Bosnia's authorities are kidnapping Turkish citizens living in Bosnia only to urgently board them on planes and send them to Turkey, Nedim Ademovic, Fatik Keskin's attorney said after the court hearing in the case of his client's apprehension and denial of permanent residence status in Bosnia on the account of being "a threat to national security."

“We claim that this persecution was agreed at the political level, which should have resulted in the actual abduction of Mr Keskin and his urgent deportation to the Republic of Turkey, where he would be imprisoned without any rights,” Ademovic stated. “All international organizations confirmed that Turkey politically persecutes people around the world and that they don't have the right to a fair trial in the Republic of Turkey. I hope that these arguments will be taken into account by the Court, that the Court will release Mr Keskin from the immigration centre so that we can continue the proceedings to prove that the deprivation of his right to freedom in Bosnia is illegal and that he and his family can continue to live as freely as all of us free citizens in Bosnia,” Ademovic explained.

Ademovic told reporters that the Court gave them no information on why Keskin, the Richmond Park Schools principal, who has been living in Bosnia for the past 20 years, was declared a threat to Bosnia's national security and on what grounds.

“According to the law, the Court had to hear our client, Mr Fatih Keskin, state his defence. We expected to receive minimum information from the Court on why Mr Keskin was declared a threat to the national security and public order. We were unable to present an adequate defence and documents if the Intelligence and Security Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina even submitted any to the competent institutions, so we were only able to present evidence that Mr Keskin was residing in Bosnia legally,” Ademovic said, adding his client never broke any laws in this country.

When asked how the Court will decide in this matter if it has no evidence od documents, Ademovic said the Court allegedly has some documents but according to him the right to state one's defence implies minimum information regardless of the fact that documents are qualified as secret.

“This way we can only state our defence hypothetically to what we've never seen or heard because this way every one of us can be declared a threat to national security,” he said.

“Unfortunately, we have evidence that this is not the only such case, but that there have been other situations, in fact, abductions of Turkish citizens who were rushed to the plane and sent to Turkey under the urgent procedure. It is frightening what is happening to people who do not pose any threat to Bosnia,” Ademovic stressed and added that “it is obvious that there is an apparatus ready to do such things under political directives.”

According to Attorney Ademovic, the modus operandi is that the authorities call a person to come by a certain police station where they urgently get locked up in the presence of other police officials. The individuals are then allegedly asked to sign pre-written documents, after which they are rushed into a car and after spending a day in an immigration centre, they are taken to an aeroplane and deported from Bosnia. Ademovic also noted that those people are then forbidden from speaking about the immigration centre and facilities where this happened.

Ademovic added that the international community is well aware of the situation and has all the evidence.

Earlier, Senka Nozica, from Keskin’s legal team, told N1 that he was taken to the immigration centre of the Service for Foreigner’s Affairs and was declared a threat to national security.

Keskin was taken away after speaking to police in the northwestern Una-Sana Canton on Tuesday. According to Richmond Park Schools, he was not allowed to contact his attorney and the next time his family heard from him, he reportedly said he was in the migrant detention centre in Lukavica, near Sarajevo.

Nozica said Keskin was handed two documents as he entered the immigration centre – one saying that he is being put under supervision, which his lawyers appealed, and another one saying that he is being stripped of his right to permanently reside in the country.

Keskin was arrested last week and after speaking to the police of the Una-Sana Canton in northern Bosnia, taken to the immigration centre near Sarajevo, awaiting trial.