Journalist Şener: They Would Have Taken Me in Anyways

Journalist Nedim Şener, who was arrested as part of the Ergenekon probe and taken to the Silivri Prison west of Istanbul on Monday (7 March) wrote a letter from prison to his family and his colleagues. The letter was published in the nation-wide Milliyet newspaper. Şener claims that he "was targeted two years ago".

The daily announced that parts written to Şener's wife and his daughter were excluded from publication in respect to their private life. Apart from that, the journalists wrote:

It became clear that they targeted me two years ago when I received a fake e-mail and not only in recent times. This incident is not directly related to TV programs of the past seven to eight months. They would have included me in such an operation anyways. This is because they decided to eliminate journalists like us and it seems that there is more to come. The questions I was asked go back as far as the time between 2003 and 2006. (...)

They even brought up the subject of the "Yasin El Kadı" book. They also asked why I asked Adil Serdar Saçan [former Head of the Istanbul Branch for Organized Crime] a certain question in the Arena [television program]. They even referred to telephone conversations I made long before the start of the Ergenekon operation and asked "Why did you talk to this and that person?".

The oddest question they asked me was related to the heart surgery of my wife. In the presence of my lawyers, prosecutor [Zekeriya] Öz asked me, "In a telephone conversation with your wife you said 'If I knew what was coming we would not have had your surgery done'. The question comes to a person's mind whether 'you let your wife go for a heart surgery in order to avoid a judicial operation on yourself'.

I replied, "This is out of the question. We learned about her heart condition on 14 February at the Hizmet Hospital. After that, the surgery was done on a date determined by Prof. Levent Saltık upon the recommendation of Bingür Sönmez from Memorial Hospital. Subsequent to my defence at the prosecution, I had this registered in the minutes during my defence at court as well. (AS/VK)