Turkish police took back into custody the head of rights group Amnesty International in Turkey, hours after an Istanbul court ordered his conditional release, the rights group said on Thursday.
Taner Kilic has been held since June 2017, when he was detained on suspicion of being part of the group led by US-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara accuses of orchestrating the July 2016 attempted overthrow of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Kilic has consistently denied the claims, while Amnesty has branded them as "baseless."
The Turkish authorities refers to the Gulen movement as a "terrorist organization" but Gulen strongly denies both any link to the coup bid and the terror label.
Kilik's supporters were relieved Wednesday when the Istanbul court his release from a jail in the Aegean city of Izmir under judicial control.
But hours later, a new arrest warrant was issued for Kilic, and he was taken back into custody, Amnesty said.
"We flew to Izmir and drove to the prison, hoping to witness Taner's release with his family. Instead, around midnight, Amnesty International witnessed Taner being taken from the Izmir prison into gendarmerie custody in a station nearby," Amnesty's Europe director Gauri van Gulik said on Twitter.