Lawyer Bedirhan Sarsılmaz
On October 25, lawyer Bedirhan Sarsılmaz was arrested in an Istanbul courtroom and later jailed for “membership of a terrorist organization.” The judge based his investigation mainly on his work as a lawyer. Sarsılmaz is a member of the Istanbul branch of the ÖHD Lawyers Association.
Construction of the “legal structure of the terrorist organization”
His defense lawyer Emrah Baran described the process in an interview with ANF: “On October 25th we were at the trial against DIAYDER with our colleague. [eine Organisation kurdischer Geistlicher, gegen die ein ‚Terrorverfahren‘ geführt wird] before the 14th High Criminal Court in Istanbul. The police called our colleague to the entrance to the courtroom and told him that there was an arrest warrant for him. We intervened and he was able to defend himself with our help, but by the end of the case our colleague was arrested. On the first day he was taken to the police station and given a 24-hour no-contact order. On the second day we were allowed to visit him. He was questioned. During the interrogation, it became clear that the allegation was based on intelligence information and was being investigated as part of an alleged ‘terrorist organization legal structure’.
This includes, for example, a conversation our client had with the father of a client who was in prison. In that conversation, he told his father about the procedure. Our colleague Bedirhan Sarsılmaz said in the interlinked conversation: ‘Okay, we can come and meet.’ Another intercepted conversation involved a conversation with a colleague. Our colleague and Mr. Bedirhan Sarsılmaz handled the case together. This professional conversation was also included in the investigation file against him.”
Posts in den virtual media as a cause of imprisonment
Baran said that in addition to Bedirhan Sarsılmaz’s professional activities, his posts on virtual media were also used as a justification for his detention. Among other things, posts about student protests and his participation in such protests were part of the justification for his imprisonment. A significant increase in police raids was also called for. It was about a police attack at the funeral of the murdered Kurdish artist in France Mr. Perwer and his criticism of a police attack at a Kurdish wedding for playing Kurdish music. The publication of articles in the newspaper Yeni Yaşam, which described the solitary confinement on Imrali as illegal, was also cited as a reason for its detention.
“Our legal work is being criminalized.”
Lawyer Emrah Baran emphasized that discussions between client and lawyer should not be stopped. He said: “According to Article 58 of the Lawyers’ Law, an investigation against a lawyer for his professional activities must be initiated directly by the public prosecutor, who in turn makes the prosecutor public recording of the lawyer’s statement. As a lawyer, he exercised his right to remain silent during police questioning. When he was brought to court the next day, the prosecutors asked to detain him without accepting his statement. He was detained because he said that he communicated with people related to the group in general, that is, with the people whose cases he was managing. “
Baran concluded: “Not even lawyers’ client conversations can be recorded according to Article 135/3 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Article 46 of the Criminal Procedure Code states that conversations with non-witnesses may not be recorded, and if they are recorded, the recordings should be destroyed. Our requests went to the public prosecutor’s office in this direction, but they were not accepted. The work of lawyers was directly criminalized. The right to defense is targeted. “
2024-10-30 14:26:00
#Direct #attack #defence
