Human Rights Violations In Turkey: Turkish Publisher Will Apply To T

HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN TURKEY: TURKISH PUBLISHER WILL APPLY TO THE ECHR

15.02.12, 11:15

Arrested publisher Ragip Zarakolu’s lawyers have filed a suit at
the European Court of Human Rights to challenge the prosecutor’s
orders that led to his arrest on Nov. 1, 2011, as part of the Kurdish
Communities Union (KCK) trials. Turkish Hurriyet Daily News writes
about this.

“The KCK probe is a politically motivated case filed by the AKP
(Justice and Development Party) government, and the combination of
the prosecutors’ and judges’ lack of independence and impartiality
makes it difficult for a just and lawful verdict to be reached,”
Zarakolu’s lawyer Ozcan Kilic told the Hurriyet Daily News.

The suit filed at the European court pertains to such matters as
treatment in detention, the legal and material basis for the arrest
and access to case files and evidence, rather than the trial process
itself, in accordance with the requirements prescribed in the fifth
article of the European Convention on Human Rights, which established
the court, according to Kilic.

“The KCK trial is going to be the case with the largest number of
suspects in Istanbul since the military coup of 1980. It is still
too early to comment on the course of the trial,” Kilic said.

Tuncay Ozkan, another suspect in the ongoing Ergenekon trials,
had already applied to the European court last week on the grounds
that his right to a fair trial had been violated and that he had
been detained for an extensive period. The European court, however,
rejected his complaint regarding the right to a fair trial but gave an
interim decision addressing claims regarding the period of his arrest,
indicating that the charge would be examined later.

“We are going to cite as the preamble our inability to access the
documents and information in the file due to the ‘order of secrecy,’
the basing of the evidence and the accusations on slippery facts,
the refusal of objections to the arrest without citing any serious
and reasonable justification and the fact that no suit has yet been
filed despite the passage of more than three months,” Kilic said.

Cem Halavurt, one of the lawyers in the high-profile case of Hrant
Dink, a Turkish journalist of Armenian origin murdered in 2007,
also said the European court’s ruling on Ozkan did not constitute a
precedent because the court examines each file separately.

Domestic judiciary processes have to be completely exhausted before
a file can be brought before the European court. Some 180 suspects
will stand trial in the KCK probe, including Zarakolu, who continues
to remain behind bars at a high-security prison in the northwestern
province of Kocaeli.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress