To united nations working group on arbitrary detention

Possession of one-dollar bills

Another absurd “indication” that a person is linked to the Gulen Movement is the possession of one-dollar bills, claimed by the Turkish government to have a secret code contained in the serial numbers used among Movement members. It is not clear how the government came up with this conspiracy or based on what evidence, but many believe it was concocted by the Erdoğan Regime to provide the appearance of mysterious plot to justify the persecution of members of the Gulen Movement.

The simple explanation for the serial numbers was provided by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing of the US Department of the Treasury, which stated that the first letter of such a serial number identifies the Federal Reserve Bank (FRB) that issued the note; since there are 12 FRBs,97 this letter is always between A and L for one-dollar notes. Many people were arrested just because they carried dollar bills in their wallets or kept them in their homes, and the arrest warrants pointed to the discovery of these bills during the execution of searches of residential or commercial locations.

A striking example of this absurdity is the arrest of NASA physicist Serkan Gölge, a 36-year-old US citizen of Turkish origin. He was vacationing in his hometown in the Turkish border province Hatay and was arrested after the failed coup when he was at the airport to return to Houston He was accused of being a CIA agent, and the evidence was a dollar bill.98 The Committee of Concerned Scientists and Endangered Scholars Worldwide issued a plea for his release. Nineteen-year-old student Yavuz Selim Yayla was arrested for having US dollar bills in his backpack on July 22, 2016 as he was on his way to spend time with his father, who lives in the US.

The indictments filed against defendants by prosecutors claimed the Movement distributed F-series dollar bills to top administrators in the network, while C-series to managers and J-series to all members were handed out.

There is no evidence that this was the case, and the Movement denied any such conspiracy or secret communication. Perhaps the only and very simple explanation is provided by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which states that F-series one-dollar notes were printed by the FRB in Atlanta, the C series in Philadelphia and the J series in Kansas City.The US Federal Reserve reported $11.7 billion in one-dollar bills in all letter series in circulation as of 2016103 and plans to issue $2.4 billion in 2017 and $2.2 billion in one-dollar bills for the year 2018.104 Considering the billions of onedollar bills in circulation, it is far-fetched

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