North police chief alleges conspiracy after being arrested

The north’s Famagusta police chief Baris Sel said his arrest in connection with the ongoing “fake diploma scandal” is a conspiracy against him on Friday.

Sel was appearing in court for the second time after being initially arrested on Monday, and broke down in tears, saying the north’s chief of police Kasim Kuni had conspired against him.

“I have no intention of running away, I have worked in this profession for 27 years and mud is being thrown at me,” he said.

He is accused of having fraudulently obtained a master’s degree in business administration from the now-infamous Cyprus Health and Social Sciences University (KSTU) in Morphou.

However, he claimed in court on Friday that he wrote a thesis and submitted it to the KSTU’s general secretary Serdal Gunduz.

Meanwhile, the lieutenant colonel from the ‘TRNC security forces command’ who was arrested on Tuesday after having allegedly obtained a forged doctorate from the KSTU was released on a 60,000TL (€1,732.50) bail on Friday.

Another ‘TRNC security forces command’ employee, a captain, has also now been arrested and was remanded in custody for three days on Friday.

In the meantime, the two relatives of Ersin Tatar’s bodyguard Serif Avcil, who was arrested last week, were handed five-day remands.

The pair had been arrested on Thursday, with one found to be in possession of a certificate of study from the KSTU and the other found to be in possession of a degree certificate from a four-year undergraduate programme.

Avcil himself most recently appeared in court on Tuesday, with police sergeant Bilger Koral saying Avcil had claimed to have “lost his phone on the way to the police station”.

He had been contacted by telephone to be summoned to the station, but when police asked for the same phone as evidence, he said he had lost it.