Lawyers Of Police Officials Appeal To Int'l Anti-Torture Bodies

Lawyers of some of the 49 police officials held despite expiry of legal detention period have appealed to main international anti-torture organizations, asking the world bodies to look into the rights violations and inhumane treatment of their clients at detention facilities.

The 49 people, including officers and senior officials such as a former head of the İstanbul Police Anti-Terror Department, are among the 115 police officials detained in pre-dawn raids on July 22 on charges of espionage and illegal wiretapping. They have been held at İstanbul's Çağlayan Courthouse even though the maximum detention period of 4 days expired two days ago, a situation that lawyers say amounts to illegal infringement on the suspects' freedom.

In an appeal to the anti-torture organizations the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture, the UN Committee Against Torture, the Association for the Prevention of Torture, as well as the International Police Association, the lawyers said the detained police officials' rights are violated as they are denied the right to defend themselves at a court, subject to mistreatment at detention facilities and prevented from meeting with their lawyers sufficiently.

“How can the police force be expected to fight corruption under these circumstances?” the lawyers asked in their petition to the international organizations.

Even though the prosecutors say the detentions are on the grounds of espionage and illegal wiretapping, the operation is widely believed to be an act of revenge by the government against a corruption probe that became public on Dec. 17, 2013 with the detention of dozens of people, including businessmen close to the government, senior bureaucrats and the sons of three now-former ministers.

Indicating strong political motivations behind the case, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has repeatedly asserted that the probe will be expanded further to punish what he called the “parallel state,” a euphemism for alleged sympathizers of the faith-based Hizmet movement within the state bureaucracy. “We have said we will enter their dens and we did and we will continue to go deeper,” the prime minister said on Monday.

He also criticized the suspects for “showing off” by raising their handcuffed hands in front of cameras. “There will be more to it,” he predicted. “We feel and see what is behind all this.”

And he insisted that there is nothing personal, saying, in reference to the suspects: “They did not betray me; they betrayed the nation.” (Cihan/Today's Zaman)

SHOTLIST
TURKEY, ISTANBUL, 29 JULY 2014

VAR of the Lawyer Ömer Turanlı's statements
VAR of the amateur foorages showing detained policemen behind bars
VAR of photos showing detained policemen sleeping on chairs

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