A regional appeals court in İstanbul on Tuesday upholds prison sentences of 14 people including journalists, board members and media workers from Cumhuriyet Daily for disseminating terrorist propaganda.
According to the ruling, Kadri Gürsel, Bülent Utku, Musa Kart, Mustafa Kemal Güngör, Hakan Kara, Önder Çelik, Güray Öz, and Emre İper will be put in prison again. They cannot appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeals rendering the regional court’s decision final since the prison sentences are shorter than five years.
Supreme Court of Appeals will decide on cases of Ahmet Şık, Akın Atalay, Murat Sabuncu, Aydın Engin, Orhan Erinç and Hikmet Çetinkaya who are convicted to prison sentences that are more than 5 years.
The regional appeals court also ruled that Ahmet Şık who was elected as deputy in the last general election on June 24, 2018 will not enjoy parliamentary immunity on the ground that the time of offence is prior to election. So Şık will be held criminally liable without the consent of the Turkish parliament.
İstanbul 27th High Criminal Court on April 24, 2018, handed down sentences ranging from two-and-a-half to seven-and-a-half years to the Cumhuriyet staff members.
Journalist Ahmet Şık, Cumhuriyet daily Editor-in-Chief Murat Sabuncu and columnist Aydın Engin were given seven years, six months, while Cumhuriyet CEO Akın Atalay was sentenced to seven years, three months, 15 days. Publisher Orhan Erinç and columnist Hikmet Çetinkaya got six years, three months and editorial consultant Kadri Gürsel two years, six months. Three other Cumhuriyet employees, Önder Çelik, Hakan Kara, Mustafa Kemal Güngör, received three years, nine months in prison.
The staff of the newspaper were charged with supporting the Gülen movement. All the convicted defendants had been released under judicial control in April 2018.
An annual press freedom report released last week by the Council of Europe (CoE) titled “Democracy at Risk: Threats and Attacks Against Media Freedom in Europe,” has argued that the Zaman Media Group, Cumhuriyet daily, Ahmet and Mehmet Altan and Nazlı Ilıcak trials illustrate the almost complete collapse of the rule of law in Turkey and highlight major concerns relating to the role of the judiciary and its independence. The report also underlined that journalists in Turkey continued to face extraordinary repression in 2018.
Turkey is the biggest jailer of journalists in the world. The most recent figures documented by SCF show that 231 journalists and media workers were in jail as February 19, 2019, most in pretrial detention. Of those in prison 158 were under arrest pending trial while only 73 journalists have been convicted and are serving their time. Detention warrants are outstanding for 152 journalists who are living in exile or remain at large in Turkey.
The post Turkish court upholds prison sentences for staff members of Cumhuriyet Daily appeared first on Stockholm Center for Freedom.
from Stockholm Center for Freedom https://stockholmcf.org/turkish-court-upholds-prison-sentences-for-staff-members-of-cumhuriyet-daily/
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