17 Turkish lawyers are under police custody

As of the moment 17 Turkish lawyers are under police custody in four different provinces.

Eight lawyers have been under police custody since 1st of November in Kastamonu, and a lawyer has been under police custody since 2nd of November in Batman.

Today, seven woman lawyers were detained in the province of Erzurum and also lawyer Selcuk Kozagacli who is the president of Progressive Lawyers Association that is shut down with an emergency decree was detained in Istanbul.

 

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Mr. Kozagacli’s arm was broken due to brutal police intervention is Soma. (May, 2014)

Selçuk Kozağaçlı, who is one the most respected human rights defender of Turkey, has been representing the Soma Mine Disaster Victims, hunger strike activists Nuriye Gulmen and Semih Ozakça and many other persecuted people.

It is reported that Mr. Kozagacli was battered while he was taken into custody and now He is on hunger strike to protest unlawful detention.

Mr. Kozagacli revealed during the Ankara Bar Association’s general assembly on Oct. 16 that people imprisoned as part of a government crackdown on the Gülen movement are being systematically tortured in the most barbaric ways including rape, removal of nails and the insertion of objects into their anuses.

“They remove the nails of colleagues [during detention] at police stations. Believe me; I saw people who underwent a colostomy after they were tortured with objects inserted into their anuses in prison and police stations,” said Kozağaçlı.


There has been a relentless campaign of arrests which has targeted fellow lawyers across the country. In 77 of Turkey’s 81 provinces, lawyers have been detained and arrested on trumped-up charges as part of criminal investigations orchestrated by the political authorities and conducted by provincial public prosecutors.
As of today, 555 lawyers have been arrested and 1433 lawyers are under prosecution, 62 lawyers were sentenced to long imprisonment.  Some of the arrested lawyers were subjected torture and ill-treatment.


Categories: Unjust / Wrongful Convictions

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  1. Turkey: Selçuk Kozağaçlı charged with “membership of an armed terrorist organization” | IAPL Monitoring Committee on Attacks on Lawyers
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