Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Ankara seeking the release of 49 detained Turkish intelligence officers who entered Syria "by mistake"

"...Sham FM said the officers had been detained while operating undercover, although there has been no word from Ankara on any such arrests.
The radio said Syria had laid down three conditions for any release: an exchange of the Turkish officers for rebel Free Syrian Army members in Turkish territory, for Turkey to halt infiltrations by the FSA, and for Turkey to stop training its members.
The radio said Damascus wanted its ally Tehran to be the witness of any accord with Ankara..."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

49 officers - that is a very large number. Were they captured individually or were they captured in a single block. Maybe the Turkish government had hired a coach to drive them across the border in a single trip.

BTW, this reminds me of an operation by the SAS in Northern Ireland back in the seventies when a car load of SAS troopers who were armed to the teeth, were captured on a back road in Ireland by the Garda. The SAS troopers claimed that it was a mistake because of bad map reading. If their map reading skills were that bad, they would probably never have been allowed in the SAS in the first place! I do hope the Syrians have given the Turks a few lessons in basic map reading.