53 Detainees Apply to ECHR after 1 Year in Prison
Lawyers of 53 detainees, among them officials of the closed pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP), applied to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The detainees have been kept in prison for a whole year under allegations regarding urban settlements of the Democratic Confederation of Kurdistan (KCK), the umbrella organisation that includes the militant Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).They have not been brought before a judge ever since.
Upon the directive of the Diyarbakır Public Chief Prosecutor's Office, former DTP deputy co-chairs Selma Irmak and Kamuran Yüksek were arrested together with another 51 people on 14 April 2009 in the course of an operation against the PKK organization. They have been detained in the Diyarbakır D Type Prison in the south-eastern Turkey.
Lawyer Aydın: They are detained for one year without evidence
Joint attorney Cihan Aydın told bianet that they filed an application at the ECHR on 19 January. "Neither have our clients been brought before a judge within a reasonable time, nor have we been informed about any evidence included in the file. In our opinion, the conditions of a fair trial were not fulfilled. As a last resort we applied to the ECHR", Aydin explained.
Aydın said that the application is based on article 5 of the European Convention on Human Rights related to the "right to liberty and security" and article 6 on the "right to a fair trial".
Aydin reminded that the detainees will have been in prison for a whole year in two weeks' time. "They have not been taken to a judge once during all this time. In our opinion, such an extension of the detention is another violation of the European Convention. We still have no knowledge regarding the indictment or the time frame. This implies an unlawful restriction of the freedom of our clients", lawyer Aydın argued.
"The detention file is kept confidential. We did not receive any information besides the questions asked by the prosecutor's office and the examining magistrate. It is impossible to make sense out of these questions since we have not been informed about the evidence related to the accusations".
The lawyer criticized, "Our requests to lift the secrecy, to disclose the relevant evidence and to release our clients were dismissed dozens of times. We have very limited data".
"In our last petition, we requested to orally review and adjudicate our objections concerned with our clients in a hearing. We did not retrieve any results from that either. Thus, the remedies of the national judiciary have been exhausted", Aydın concluded.
Radio journalists Birsin also in prison
After the search and seizure decision of the Diyarbakır 6th High Criminal Court, the police in cities like Istanbul, Ankara, Batman, Mardin, Adana, Elazığ, Gaziantep and Şanlıurfa carried out further operations in the same context.
Ahmet Birsin, General Publication Co-ordinator of privately-owned Kurdish Gün TV broadcasting in and around Diyarbakır, was detained as well in the course of an operation allegedly directed at KCK.
The Diyarbakır Chief Prosecutor's Office announced that the operation had been directed at the "Turkey Co-ordination Unit consisting of eight PKK members" based on a one year's follow up of "technical monitoring, telephone tapping and account movements". (EÖ/VK)