A foreign cryptography expert hired by the Ankara Prosecutor’s Office has failed to crack the phone used by the assassin of the late Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrey Karlov, who was killed in Ankara in December 2016.
The expert, a Chinese national living in the United Kingdom, worked on Mevlüt Mert Altıntaş’s phone for 72 hours in a special room in the Ankara courthouse as part of Public Prosecutor Adem Akıncı’s investigation.
Despite failing to crack the installed double encryption programs, the expert was reportedly paid $20,000 as agreed, Hurriyet Daily News reported.
The prosecutor was previously able to access Altıntaş’s e-mails and messages as experts were able to break into his iCloud account, but his contacts via applications such as FaceTime could not be identified.
Karlov was killed on Dec. 19, 2016 while delivering a speech at the Contemporary Arts Gallery in Ankara’s central Çankaya district.
