The Forensic Medicine Institute (Adli Tıp Kurumu, ATK) has found that İbrahim Halil Al, who is being treated for soft tissue cancer, is able to meet his own needs and may remain in prison, his wife Bahar Al told TR724 on 30 September.

Al is serving a sentence of 8 years 9 months imposed in Şanlıurfa in proceedings concerning the Gülen movement. He entered Edirne L-type Closed Prison on 19 March 2026, the day the Court of Cassation upheld the sentence. His wife was detained the same day and released on 24 April after eight months in prison across two periods; her own sentence of 6 years 3 months was quashed, and her verdict hearing is listed for 15 October.

He had cancer surgery at Dicle University Hospital about 18 months ago and three PET scans before imprisonment. In August his wife said that in the five months since he entered prison he had received no tests and no treatment — “not even a single pill”. A head-only CT scan was carried out in place of the whole-body scan clinicians had indicated. The report on it took around five months to appear. When it did, it recorded progression in three areas and recommended a further PET scan.

Under Article 16 of Law No. 5275, suspension of the execution of a sentence on health grounds requires a health board report. That report could not be prepared while the CT report remained unwritten. It is the ATK’s assessment, now negative, that determines whether a prisoner is released.

Five requests to transfer Al to a prison near his family have been refused and a sixth is pending. An application to the Presidential Communication Centre was answered with the information that a transfer can only be requested from within the prison.

The family lives in Siverek, Şanlıurfa. The journey to Edirne takes about 27 hours. Bahar Al is raising four children, aged 21, 17, 13 and 4, and says she has more than ten chronic conditions of her own. “We are waiting for a transfer with four children. We are told there is none. The children have started school. How are we going to visit him now?”

The case against Al rests, according to his wife, on work 17 years ago at institutions later closed by decree, on attending religious gatherings and on collecting scholarship donations. She says the file contains no ByLock record, no Bank Asya account and no magazine subscription. “We are two theology graduates. How could we have harmed our country or humanity?”

The couple were taken into custody on the eve of Ramadan. “On the morning of Ramadan Bayram (festival) the children were devastated. All at once they were left without a mother and without a father.”

The conviction rests on evidence the ECtHR’s Grand Chamber has already held cannot establish membership of an armed organisation. What the forensic institute has now decided is whether the man serving it will be treated.