ANKARA: An Ankara court on Wednesday acquitted the only suspect in a case over the alleged poisoning of former president Turgut Ozal, who died in office in 1993, a defence lawyer said.

Retired general Levent Ersoz, 60, has been on trial since October last year accused of attempted murder.

The court ruled there was not sufficient evidence against Ersoz and decided to acquit him, his lawyer Hulusi Coskun said. “This trial should have never taken place. We have demanded his acquittal since the very beginning,” he said.

Ersoz had already been convicted and jailed last year in one of the conspiracy cases against an array of figures accused of trying to topple Turkey’s Islamic-leaning government.

But he was released in March after an Istanbul court decided to review the cases, a development that may open the path for retrials for hundreds of military officers jailed for coup-plotting in 2012 and 2013.

Ozal became Turkey’s eighth president in 1989. When he died in office aged 65, the cause of death was given as heart failure.

His remains were exhumed from his mausoleum in October 2012 after prosecutors issued a warrant for toxicology tests.

A belated autopsy was requested following a presidential report that ruled the death was “suspicious”, citing the absence of an investigation and missing blood test results.

Published in Dawn, November 27th, 2014