Alparslan Celik
Turkish citizen Alparslan Celik, who initially admitted responsibility for the murder of Russian pilot Oleg Peshkov in 2015 in Syria, has been released from prison. He was convicted and served time for illegal possession of a weapon, RIA Novosti reports with reference to his lawyer.
“Celik was released after serving a five-year sentence,” the agency quotes the Turkish lawyer Murat Ustundag as saying.
The Turkish Air Force shot down a Russian Su-24 bomber involved in an anti-terrorist operation in Syria on November 24, 2015. Pilot Oleg Peshkov and navigator Konstantin Murakhtin ejected. Murakhtin managed to escape, and Peshkov was shot from the ground by militants when he was in the air over the territory of the Syrian Turkmen.
Alparslan Celik immediately after the death of Peshkov said that he was involved in the murder, but after being arrested during interrogation he began to say that he had not ordered the militants from his squad to shoot at the ejected pilot. He was not tried in a murder case.
After that, Russia imposed sanctions on Turkey, in particular, banning the import of a number of food products. In June 2016, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan expressed regret about what had happened, after which Moscow began to gradually lift restrictions. On December 2, 2019, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, referring to the Stockholm organization Nordic Research Monitoring Network, reported that Erdogan personally gave the command to shoot down a Russian Su-24 bomber in the skies over Syria in 2015.
