ATHENS – The Council of State (CoS) will decide on whether to uphold the asylum status granted to one of the Turkish officers who fled Turkey after the attempted coup that was challenged by Migration Policy Minister Yiannis Mouzalas, a three-member committee of court decided on Friday.

The ruling of the CoS on Suleyman Ozkaynakci, co-pilot of the helicopter that carried the 8 Turkish soldiers to Alexandroupolis in July 2016, will also be applied to the other seven asylum seekers as it will be considered as a an original trial and will therefore constitute a legal precedent.

The committee argued that the case raises an issue of a more “general interest” concerning the interpretation of the provisions of Article 1F of the 1951 Geneva Convention on the legal status of refugees.

The request to take the case to CoS was submitted by the lawyers of Ozkaynakci, Nikos Alivizatos and Stavros Tsakyrakis, as well as the legal team of the Greek Council for Refugees, through Vasilis Papadopoulos. The date of the first hearing will be announced next week.