Prison Chief Threatened Fellow Prisoners after Torturing Çeber

In a hearing concerning the death of Engin Çeber on 8 June, fellow detainee Şükrü Zeren reported that after Engin Çeber had been severely beaten, Second Chief of Prison Fuat Karaosmanoğlu threatened other convicts that the same could happen to them. Further witnesses will be heard in the next hearing on 22 July.

Defendant Şükrü Zeren, who was in the same cell as Çeber, claimed that the guards who tortured Çeber  threatened the other detainees that if they behaved the same way as Çeber did, they would be 'punished' like him.

Çeber, a human rights activist, was arrested after he issued a press release protesting that the shooting of a left-wing human rights activist by the police, which resulted in his paralysis, had not been investigated or punished by the authorities. Çeber's lawyer Oya Alsan said in a bianet interview: "The fact that the lives of the witnesses are in danger has a negative influence on the case and inhibits the safety of justice"

The next hearing of the Bakirköy 14^th Heavy Penal Court in Istanbul is scheduled for 22 July. 

Witness contradicts expert report

With his testimony Zeren contradicts the expert report, which had been presented to the court in the hearing on 5 June. Due to this report, a video filmed with a hidden camera in Metriz Prison on 7 October 2008 has been analysed by lipreading. As an alleged result, a threat from the guards could not be detected. Furthermore, it was claimed that Çeber already had bruises on his body and his head by the time he entered the prison and that he was not able to take in any food.

However, fellow prisoner Zeren states the opposite by testifying that Çeber was beaten in prison because he refused to participate in the morning and evening counting procedure. After the morning count, the other prisoners had been taken upstairs and when returning to the cell later on they found Çeber lying on the floor. According to Zeren's statement, it was then that Second Chief Karaosmanoğlu told them the same would happen to other prisoners if they behaved like Çeber.

Lawyer Aslan claimed that Zeren's description of the scene fully concurs with the video recorded in the prison in the morning of 7 October.

Aslan filed the witnesses' and their lawers complaints to the court and demanded that the person responsible for the expert report must be called to account - measures that have been rejected so far.

Defendants will be brought to court by force

Not all of the expected defendants attended today's hearing. Alsan said those people are going to be forced to attend the hearing on 22 July, if necessary with police force. One of these suspects is the doctor who treated Çeber in hospital after he had been tortured in the Istinye Police Station in Istanbul before his imprisonment. (BÇ/VK/AG)