According to the Mesopotamia News Agency, US citizen Mark John Xenakes was detained by the Turkish police for flying a drone in the Sur district of Diyarbakır (Amed).
In his statement at the police station, Xenakes said that he had taken images and photographs from the area because he was curious about the historic city walls. He claimed that he did not know that he was not allowed to take images of the region.
Xenakes is still in the process of being interrogated.
Born in 1969, Xenakes is a flight engineer who served in the African Union Mission for the United Nations in Somalia. For 14 years he worked for a company belonging to the US army.