Turkish court decided for the continuation of Kurdish journalist İdris Sayılğan’s pretrial imprisonment on Wednesday, according to a report by Platform for Independent Journalism (P24).
The 2nd High Criminal Court in Muş province ruled Sayılğan, a reporter of now-shuttered pro-Kurdish Dicle news agency (DİHA) to continue to remain in jail. Sayılğan has been in pre-trial detention for 19 months.
According to the P24’s report, the third hearing of the trial against Sayılğan was heard in the eastern city of Muş on Wednesday. Sayılğan, who has been in pre-trial detention since October 25, 2016, was unable to appear before court due to a technical failure in the judicial tele-conferencing system that would connect to the prison in the Black Sea province of Trabzon where the reporter is currently held. The court ruled to continue Sayılğan’s detention, setting October 5, 2018 as the date of the next hearing.
Among other defendants tried as part of the same case, Medeni Işık, an executive of the Mesopotamia Association of Solidarity with Families Who Lost their Relatives (MEYA-DER) was released on judicial probe.
The court, however, ruled to continue the detention of three other defendants still in custody pending trial, Hatice Şeker, the co-President of the Democratic Regions Party’s (DBP) Muş branch, Ayşe Söylemez, the former co-chair of the Peoples’ Democratic Party’s (HDP) Muş branch, and Çiçek Tutuş, member of Muş’s municipal assembly. The trial was monitored in the courtroom by P24 and Media and Law Studies Association (MLSA).
Sayılğan’s lawyer Barış Oflas criticized the court’s failure to ensure the reporter’s presence via the tele-conferencing system, adding that it amounted to a violation of the rights of the defense. He also called on the prosecutor to justify why he claimed there was a suspicion indicating that Sayılğan might attempt to escape if freed pending the continuation of the trial. “Sayılğan will continue doing journalism after he will be released. There is no question of an attempt to escape,” he told the court.
Lawyer Veysel Ok, who also represents Sayılğan in the case, told the court that the reporter’s continued pre-trial detention was against the European Court of Human Right (ECtHR) case law. “You may not like Sayılğan’s reports or the terminology he uses, it may even disturb you. However, what you can do at most is not to read those news articles,” Ok said. Ok also noted that the only evidence presented against Sayılğan were recordings with his news sources. Confidentiality of a journalist’s news sources is under the protection of the Turkish Press Law, Ok said.
Meanwhile, journalist Erdoğan Alayumat, a reporter of pro-Kurdish Dicle news agency (Dihaber), which was closed by a government decree, was released by Turkish court on Wednesday following a detention of 10 months.
Charged with “obtaining state’s confidential documents on political and militaristic purposes” and “being a member of an illegal organisation,” reporters Erdoğan Alayumat and Nuri Akman have been each facing 45 years in prison.
Referred to Hatay Courthouse 14 days after being detained in the framework of “reasonable suspicion” while covering news on Hatay-Syria borderline, Alayumat was arrested on July 27, 2017.
Turkey is ranked 157th among 180 countries in the 2018 World Press Freedom Index released by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on Wednesday. If Turkey falls two more places, it will make it to the list of countries on the blacklist, which have the poorest record in press freedom.
Turkey is the biggest jailer of journalists in the world. The most recent figures documented by SCF show that 253 journalists and media workers were in jail as of May 11, 2018, most in pretrial detention. Of those in prison 192 were under arrest pending trial while only 61 journalists have been convicted and are serving their time. Detention warrants are outstanding for 142 journalists who are living in exile or remain at large in Turkey.
Detaining tens of thousands of people over alleged links to the Gülen movement, the government also closed down some 200 media outlets, including Kurdish news agencies and newspapers, after the coup attempt in Turkey on July 15, 2016.
The post Turkish court rules continuation of pro-Kurdish DİHA reporter Sayılğan’s imprisonment appeared first on Stockholm Center for Freedom.
from Stockholm Center for Freedom https://stockholmcf.org/turkish-court-rules-continuation-of-pro-kurdish-diha-reporter-sayilgans-imprisonment/
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