Turkish-Mexican national arrested in Cambodia amid alleged Gulen links

Cambodian police have arrested the Turkish-Mexican former director of a school run by the movement of US-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara blames for a failed 2016 coup, his wife said on Friday.

Osman Karaca, former director of Zaman International School, was arrested by eight policemen while he was at a bank on October 14 in the capital Phnom Penh, said his wife Grace Karaca, who fears he will be deported to Turkey.

“That’s the last we have heard of him,” Karaca told Reuters on Friday from Mexico, where she is living with her son.

The Mexican Embassy in Vietnam - it does not have one in Cambodia - confirmed the arrest in a letter and asked Cambodia’s Interior Ministry to provide information and let him communicate with a consul.

Cambodia’s Interior Ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak could not be reached for comment. Police spokesman Chhay Kim Khoeun declined to comment. Turkey’s Embassy in Phnom Penh did not immediately respond to a request for comment.