Turkish authorities refuse to release thousands of political prisoners who served their times from prisons, tr724 news website reported.
Journalist Hanım Büşra Erdal is a case in point. She was sentenced to 6 years 3 months in jail and served required 44 months. Hence she is due for release on probation according to Turkish legislation on the execution of sentences. Yet authorities reject to release her on the grounds that her sentence is not yet upheld by the Supreme Court.
Thousands of others who completed their prison times are not released on this ground. The office of the prosecutor in charge of execution of sentences that has to step in and release them on probation adamantly rejects to do so.
Like tens of thousands of fellow political prisoners, Erdal could not benefit either from a bill enacted on 15th of April and aimed at reducing the inmate population of Turkey’s overcrowded prisons amidst fear of Coronavirus pandemic’s spread to the prisons.
The bill basically provided early parole and house arrest possibilities for a broad range of offenders by reducing the term that has to be spent in the prison from two-thirds to a half. Yet it explicitly excluded some other crimes, terrorism-related crimes and crimes against the constitutional order being first and foremost.
Thus, a broad range of dissidents like Erdal including tens of thousands of journalists, lawyers, politicians, academics, human right defenders and civil servants indicted or convicted under the country’s controversial and broadly interpreted anti-terrorism laws were excluded from the early parole possibility.
Erdal worked as a correspondent for daily Zaman, once the largest circulated Turkish daily taken forcibly by the government authorities over on March 5, 2015 on its alleged affiliation to the faith based Gülen movement, number one nemesis of the President Erdoğan. Designating the movement as terrorist organization Erdoğan started a witch hunt against the real and perceived Gülenists and institutions affiliated to the movement.
An abortive coup attempt threatened to oust Erdoğan on July 15, 2016 made the matters worse for the adherents of the movement. Accusing the leader of the movement Fethullah Gülen, a cleric living in seclusion in US, of masterminding the coup, an accusation strongly denied by Gülen, he sent tens of thousands real and perceived Gülenists behind the bars.
Erdal, being one of them, was arrested on July 25, 2016, ten days after the foiled putsch, on the accusation of membership to a terrorist organization, that is Gülen movement, solely over her news, tweets and the fact that she worked for daily Zaman. In her first hearing in 2017 the public prosecutor demanded 10 years for her. The court ordered her release instead. Yet she was rearrested before being able to leave the prison. The judges who ordered her release were dismissed immediately.
According to German daily Die Welt, she was humiliated by the prison authorities before being taken back to her cell, by subjecting her to a naked body search which was utterly unnecessary given that she was already under arrest. She was eventually sentenced to 6 years and 3 months imprisonment on March 8, 2018.
She completed the required 44 months in prison and is entitled to probation as of March 2020. But she still languishes in her single-man cell because her sentence, pending appeal at the Supreme Court, is not finalized yet. To make the matters worse she recently began to share her cell with another inmate transferred there to dilute overcrowded wards after Corona outbreak. “I cannot breathe, nor can I move in my cell,” she wrote in a recent letter to Ahval news website.
Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu, a deputy of pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party and a 
prominent human rights defender announced Erdal’s case on his twitter account and asked, “There are many prisoners in similar situation being held in prison instead of being released at such a time of pandemic because the Supreme Court has not yet approved their sentence! What a scandal! Is it a revenge?”
According to the lawyers those who completed their prison terms should be released on probation even if their appeals are not yet reviewed by the Supreme Court. However, Turkish authorities do not prefer to take this course when it comes to those who were convicted on Gülenist charges.
Still worse, authorities are even obstructing arbitrarily the release of those whose sentences are approved by the Supreme Court and who, as such, are entitled to benefit from one-year probation period, argues İlker Doğan, a journalist from tr724 news website.
Even if their cases are finalized by the Supreme Court, Gülenists remain in prison by means of a margin of appreciation granted by the Law on the Execution of Sentences to prison authorities. After the review by the Supreme Court of the sentence of an inmate the Prison Observation Board drafts a report upon which the Prosecutor’s Office takes a decision. Based on these reports hundreds of prisoners who have served their prison terms and are entitled to one-year probation period are being kept in jail on the grounds that they did not repent their crimes and confess their guilt during hearings.
Particularly those public employees who, after being dismissed from government positions with emergency decree laws, have been sentenced to 6 years and 3 months on the accusation of membership to a terrorist organization, read the Gülen movement, and who have completed their prison terms are prevented from benefiting from this 1year probation amenity based on the prison administration’s margin of appreciation.
A decision by Niğde Prison administration on release demand of an anonymous inmate who have completed his/her prison time reads: “The inmate in question from the time he/she came to our correctional institution onwards imparted no desire to discontinue his/her relation with the [terrorist] organization. He/she continued to stay in a ward with inmates convicted on FETO/PDY-related crimes. [FETÖ/PDY is a derogatory term concocted by the Erdoğan regime to refer to the Gülenist movement] Nor did he/she present any document to the prison administration showing that he/she has no connection whatsoever with the organization in question. He/she failed to benefit from efficient repentance provisions of the Turkish Penal Code during trial nor did he/she show any sign of repentance… [Therefore] his/her request to benefit from one-year probation amenity is rejected.
Lawyers claim that it is practically in vain to seek legal redress to such injustices or to sue those who abuse the margin of appreciation accorded by law to them because they are endowed with an aegis of immunity with emergency decree law no. 667 which provided civil, criminal, administrative and financial non-liability for public officials in their counter-terrorist acts and actions. Furthermore, the prosecution of those officials is subject to permission from the Ministry of Justice which is not eager to see its personnel judicially harassed.
According to the Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) recently publicized 2020 World Press Freedom Index in which Turkey ranked 154 among 180 countries in terms of press freedom, Turkey is the world’s biggest jailer of professional journalists.
The post Turkish authorities refuse to release political prisoners who served their prison times appeared first on Stockholm Center for Freedom.
from Stockholm Center for Freedom https://stockholmcf.org/turkish-authorities-refuse-to-release-political-prisoners-who-served-their-prison-times/
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