VAN - According to the information obtained, the prosecutor used inadmissable tapes against the journalists who were arrested after breaking the story about two villagers tortured and thrown from a military helicopter. Attorney Murat Timur stated that both the prosecution and the police committed a crime.

 

Mesopotamia Agency (MA) reporters Adnan Bilen and Cemil Uğur, Jinnews reporter Şehriban Abi and journalist Nazan Sala who broke the story about two villagers tortured and thrown from a military helicopter were arrested on October 9, 2020 and on April 2, all of them were released by the court which accused them of 'being a member of a terrorist organization'. It turned out that the court had previously decided to "destroy" the phone tapes presented as evidence in the files of the journalists who gained their freedom after 6 months of detention. It was learned that a decision were made to destroy the tapes on April 24, 2020 which were used as evidence by the court.

 

'COURT ACTED WITH PREJUDICE'

  

Murat Timur, one of the lawyers of the journalists we interviewed on the issue, noted that the prosecutor prepared the indictment with unlawful evidence and this was "a clear indication that he acted with prejudice". Noting that one of the most basic evidence in the file was the phone calls in question, Attorney Timur said, "The Anti-Terrorism Unit makes a request from the prosecutor's office for the detection of the communication records on February 20, 2020. This request is accepted. They tapped the phones of 10 journalists and listen to them for 2 months. The law enforcement units could not find any criminal elements in these tapes, therefore they apply to the court to terminate the wire tapping decision and the court accepts. However, the same tapes were used by the prosecutor as evidence against the journalists 8 months after the decision was made to destroy the tapes.

 

PROSECUTOR COMMITTED A CRIME

 

Emphasizing that using the tapes that were supposed to be destroyed is a violation of the  freedom of communication and the privacy of the private life of the people, Timur said: "A prosecutor doing this is obviously a crime. This is maltreatment and abuse of office. The public prosecutor should have filed a criminal complaint the minute he realized that the tapes that were supposed to be destroyed were used as evidence. However the prosecutor chose to use these inadmissable evidence and therefore committed a crime with the law enforcement officers involved. The court must file a criminal complaint against those who committed this crime."

 

CRIMINAL COMPLAINT 

 

Stating that the Constitutional Court (AYM) previously ruled that telephone calls that do not contain criminal elements cannot be used as evidence in a different file, Timur said, "Using these inadmissable tapes is a crime and requires compensation.The court has to file a criminal complaint for using evidence unlawfully. Otherwise we will file a criminal complaint against those who create evidence against our clients in this way."

 

MA / Gökhan Altay