justice
The federal police raided the Kurdish TV stations in Denderleeuw last night. According to the Kurdish community organization Navbel, laptops and other technical equipment were seized.
House searches took place last night at the two Kurdish media Sterk TV and Medya Haber TV in Denderleeuw. This was reported by Navbel and has been confirmed by the federal public prosecutor’s office.
According to the prosecutor’s office, the searches were carried out at the request of the French national anti-terrorist prosecutor’s office PNAT, which is conducting an investigation into the financing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Our country is participating in the operation. In France and for the European Union, the PKK is a terrorist organization. In Belgium, the PKK is not on the terrorist list.
Navbel’s Orhan Kilic says Belgium is trying to “criminalize” Kurdish TV channels. “Such a raid has a link with the Turkish state.” He sees that link because independent Kurdish journalists were also arrested in Turkey on Monday night. “We do not think that what happened here is unrelated to police actions in Turkey.”
The employees of the channels Sterk TV and Medya Haber TV said they have no doubt that “this attack took place as a result of dirty relations with the fascist regime of Erdogan (the Turkish president, ed.).” They also say that during the search, equipment was damaged, cables were cut and laptops and other communication equipment were taken by the police.
Operation Sputnik
It is not the first time that a police raid has taken place at the channels in Denderleeuw. In 1996, the federal prosecutor’s office launched the large-scale Operation Sputnik. The TV studio’s board members were arrested and charged with laundering money derived from terrorist activities and human trafficking. The defense had shown that anonymous witnesses, who had claimed to have been extorted by the PKK, had in reality been manipulated by the gendarmerie.
The trial against the seventeen suspects in the Sputnik case ended in a fizzle, just like the trial after the raid in 2008 and 2010.
