Kayseri 4th High Penal Court sentenced lawyers HŞ and HHA 6 years 3 months prison sentence with the charge to be the member of the armed terrorist organization only for allegedly downloading the Bylock i-message app.
The victim lawyer, Hacı Hasan Aydın said (in his tweet below) that despite the digital forensic report presents that I have never downloaded the BYLOCK secure i-message application, the court sentenced me 6 years 3 months, I wish hell for them.
The US-based think tank Freedom House, which has listed Turkey in his newly released report among the countries in which Internet freedoms are restricted most, stated that tens of thousands of Turkish citizens have been arbitrarily detained for their alleged use of the encrypted communications app ByLock.
Stating that the past year featured an unprecedented increase in the number of prosecutions and detentions of Turkish citizens for their online activities, Freedom House’s report said that “Legal and technical experts have disputed the government’s claim that the (ByLock) app was primarily used by members of the Gülen movement, pointing to its wide availability and popularity in 41 countries. It was once available to download at no cost on the app stores of Apple and Google, until it was removed by the developer. Turkish officials claim that the app was designed by a senior member of the Gülen movement. Experts believe that Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) hacked a ByLock server located in Lithuania, which listed its hundreds of thousands of users in an unencrypted form.”
“Despite a lack of evidence, and the arbitrary nature of the blanket arrests, numerous users have been deemed guilty by association for simply downloading the app. In the month of October 2016 alone, arrest warrants were issued for 404 individuals for allegedly using ByLock, including members of the police and judiciary,” said the report and added that “The ByLock controversy has also ensnared members of the human rights community. Taner Kılıç, the Turkey chair of Amnesty International, was detained in June 2017, and the only known evidence in his case was the allegation that he had used ByLock, which he has denied.
The Freedom House is not the only international entity which criticises Erdogan Regime’s purge over the Bylock app. Fox IT which is Netherland based prominent forensic IT company, debunks (MIT) Turkish National Intelligence Agency’s report on BYLOCK app. “The investigation performed by Fox-IT contradicts the key findings of the MİT. Fox-IT also discovered inconsistencies in the MİT report that indicated manipulation of results and/or screenshots by MİT. What is more, Fox-IT found that the MİT investigation is fundamentally flawed due to the contradictory and baseless findings, lack of objectivity and lack of transparency. Fox-IT has read and written many digital investigation reports over the last 15 years. Based on this experience, Fox-IT finds the quality of the MIT report very low, especially when weighed against the consequences of the conclusions.” was said in the statement by Fox-IT after its forensic survey on the Turkish INTEL’s report on BYLOCK app.
Categories: Unjust / Wrongful Convictions