The spy who runs Turkey’s clandestine and secretive operations in Libya helped orchestrate a false flag coup attempt in July 2016 to prop up the embattled regime of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and set up the opposition for mass persecution, a Nordic Monitor investigation has discovered.

Sadık Üstün, an operative of Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT), played a key role in organizing Islamist groups in Libya in 2011 and later returned to Turkey to run political operations on behalf of President Erdoğan. He helped plot the failed coup, entrapped generals in military operations that had nothing to do with a coup, framed the mobilization of troops under emergency terror threats as a putschist attempt and accused Erdogan’s foe, the unsuspecting Gülen movement, of being coup plotters. He went back to Libya again in order to shore up support for the Erdoğan-aligned Libyan leadership and is currently in charge of intelligence operations in the North African country.

Üstün’s role in the false military bid to purportedly oust Erdogan, which was supposed to be secret, was exposed when he rushed into one major timing mistake. He prematurely identified the alleged leader of the putschists, triggering closer scrutiny of his role in the July 15 events. During the court hearings of suspected putschists who knew him well, many came forward revealing further details of his role in the false flag. Immediately after the coup events, the Erdoğan government sent him off to Australia as a diplomatic attaché, out of the reach of defense attorneys who wanted to put him on the stand and cross-examine him. He never testified in court despite repeated motions filed by defense lawyers in multiple court cases and was not summoned to testify before the parliamentary committee set up to investigate the failed coup.

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In a major blunder, Üstün, a military man-turned-spy, prematurely named a decorated general, senior member of the Supreme Military Council (YAŞ) and former Air Forces Commander Akın Öztürk, as the leader of the putschists when the general was still at his daughter’s home, located some four or five kilometers from Akıncı Air Base, the alleged headquarters of the putschists. Öztürk, who had no affiliation with the Gülen movement, was completely unaware of the plot unfolding around him and was playing with his grandchildren on the night of the coup attempt.

Read more: Nordic Monitor