ANKARA, May 17 (Xinhua) -- Turkey slammed on Thursday a U.S. court ruling against a Turkish banker who was sentenced for violating U.S. sanctions on Iran.
Mehmet Hakan Atilla, 47, former deputy chief executive officer of the Turkish state-controlled Halkbank, was sentenced by a U.S. district court in New York to 32 months in prison on charge of helping Iran evade U.S. sanctions.
The trial against Atilla "was not legal but political," Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdag said on his Tweeter account.
The court decision came with "fictitious trial" and "lacks any legal foundation," Bozdag added.
The sentence was "inconsistent with the principle of a fair trial," Turkey's Foreign Ministry said in a statement late Wednesday.
Atilla was convicted by a New York jury on Jan. 3 on five counts of bank fraud and conspiracy.
The case has further strained the ties between the U.S. and Turkey, which has strongly denounced the U.S. for harboring a Turkish cleric in exile, Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara held responsible for a failed coup in 2016, and moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to the disputed city of Jerusalem on Monday.
