Turkish prosecutors drop graft charges against 96 persons

The Turkish public prosecution office decided on Monday to drop corruption charges previously levelled against 96 individuals including son of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The 96 defendants will be no longer wanted for the prosecutors.
Thirty-three police officials were being sought in the early hours today on charges, inter alia, of wiretapping, espionage and forgery, Anadolu Agency reported.
The anti-graft operation took place across several police departments in Istanbul and in 16 Turkish cities; it followed an arrest warrant on December 17, 2013, for dozens of high-profile figures, including the sons of three former ministers and leading businesspeople.
All those detained in December were later released pending trial, according to the Anadolu report.
The government had denounced the December probes as a "dirty plot orchestrated by the parallel state" - a group of bureaucrats it said were embedded in the state institutions, including the judiciary and the police.