A Turkish police officer has been acquitted of the torture of four villagers despite being positively identified by his victims through the police’s own video footage taken from the police station.
The pro-Kurdish Mezopotamya (MA) news agency reported on Wednesday that the judge refused to the video footage from which the men identified their torturer because “the recordings were not clear enough”.
The four villagers were tortured on June 9, 2017 while in police custody after they had been detained on suspicion of involvement in a mortar attack on the Gevas District Police Department in the eastern province of Van.
Barely hours after the incident, pro-government journalist Fatih Tezcan posted some photos on his Twitter account, showing the villagers beaten up with bleeding faces and blaming them for being the members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
It later emerged that the men were innocent and the Gevas Court of First Instance on June 14, 2017 ordered their release.
The local men lodged a formal complaint against the Gevas police on June 21, 2017, claiming they had been tortured by the police for “admitting their crimes”.
During the investigation into their allegations by the prosecutor, the villagers identified seven police officers from video recordings taken by hundreds of cameras at the police station.
The prosecutor, however, only opted to take the case against one police officer to court.
After almost two years, the court ruled for the acquittal of the police officer, saying that the faces of suspects and victims could not be clearly identified due to low-quality
recordings and low ambient lighting in the police station where the torture and ill-treatment allegedly took place.
The court took the decision despite an official expert opinion report, which backed the villagers’ allegations.
In Turkey, people accused of terrorism or of being linked to the July 2016 attempted coup are at risk of torture in police custody, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), an independent human rights organization which investigates and reports on abuses happening all around the world.
Turkey to review definition of torture, perpetrators must face trial, UN says
The post Turkish Judge rules Police’s own video footage not good enough to confirm police torture allegations appeared first on IPA NEWS.
from IPA NEWS https://ipa.news/2019/04/25/turkish-judge-rules-polices-own-video-footage-not-good-enough-to-confirm-police-torture-allegations/
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