A lawyer, sentenced to more than 13 years in prison by a Turkish court on terror charges, died on Thursday after 238 days of a hunger strike she embarked on to call for a fair trial.
People’s Law Office earlier had indicated that the doctors were trying to resuscitate her with cardiac massage and then announced her death on Twitter.
Ebru Timtik was sentenced in 2019 to more than 13 years in prison over “membership in a terrorist organization.”
However, rights advocates watching the case claim that she was being prosecuted for her actions as a lawyer.
A higher court rejected her appeal of the March 2019 verdict in October, and another appeal was pending before Turkey’s Supreme Court of Appeals. Like his colleague Aytaç Ünsal, also in detention, Ebru Timtik had gone on hunger strike to demand a fair trial. The two lawyers had stated that they “would persist in their hunger strike even if it were to result in their death.”
According to a UN review, Turkey jailed some 570 lawyers and prosecuted 1,480 in total after the abortive 2016 coup up to January 2020.
UN report indicates that rapporteurs “observed a pattern of persecution of lawyers representing individuals accused of terrorism.”
Critics label the country’s counter-terrorism law as “broad and vague” due to the definition of “terrorism” in article 1.
According to the said UN report, the counter-terrorism law could “be used for politically motivated prosecutions of political opponents, human rights defenders, and journalists, particularly for alleged ‘membership of a terrorist organization.'”
Through successive states of emergencies after the failed 2016 coup, the country jailed tens of thousands on terror charges as part of a mass crackdown targeting dissent groups.
The post Jailed lawyer dies in Turkey after 238 days of hunger strike appeared first on Turkish Minute.
from Turkish Minute https://www.turkishminute.com/2020/08/28/jailed-lawyer-dies-in-turkey-after-238-days-of-hunger-strike/
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