Cansu PİŞKİN
İstanbul
The court, reading the judgement in the Contemporary Jurists Association (ÇHD) and People's Law Office (HHB) trial in the absence of the detained lawyers and their defence counsel, handed down sentences totalling 159 years 2 months to the ÇHD and HHB member lawyers
The trial continued in which twenty lawyers, six of them in detention, who are members of the Contemporary Jurists Association (ÇHD) and People's Law Office (HHB) which were closed under a decree with the force of law, face charges of “management of a terrorist organisation” and “membership of a terrorist organization.” The detained lawyers and their defence counsel did not attend the hearing held at the Silivri Prison Complex by Istanbul Serious Crime Court No 37. More than one hundred gendarmerie officers were on duty at the hearing at which lawyers Ahmet Mandacı and Zehra Özdemir, on release pending trial, were in attendance. Among those following the hearing, apart from the defendants’ relatives, were lawyers from European Democratic Lawyers (AED/EDL) and the European Association of Lawyers for Democracy & World Human Rights (ELDH), lawyers from Italy, Belgium, Germany, France and Greece and Milena Buyum, Amnesty International Turkey Senior Campaigner.
On the second day (19 March), the court adjourned the third block of hearings until 10.00 today to hear the statements on the merits. Presiding judge Akın Gürlek had an entry made into the record that the detained lawyers and their counsel had not entered the courtroom although the time was 10.37. Presiding judge Akın Gürlek then asked the defendants on pretrial release, Ahmet Mandacı and Zehra Özdemir, for their statements on the merits. Mandacı, stating that his lawyer was at the same time his wife and had been unable to attend the hearing having obtained a medical note due to pregnancy, said that he could not make a defence on the merits at this stage. Mandacı reiterated his applications from yesterday and applied for the ending of house arrest. Pretrial releasee lawyer Zehra Özdemir recalled that the court had imposed a restriction on her lawyer Bahattin Özdemir yesterday and stated that she could not make a defence on the merits in the absence of her lawyer. She called on the requirement for Özdemir to attend and sign twice a week to be lifted. Asked for their final words, Mandacı and Özdemir asked to be acquitted saying, “We wanted to make our defence accompanied by our lawyers.” The court took a recess in the hearing until noon so as to announce the judgment.
Concurrently, the lawyers had applied to recuse the bench on 19 March but the court had dismissed this application. It appears that the lawyers objected to the next senior court, Istanbul Serious Crime Court No 1, on the bench’s dismissal of the recusal application.
Following the recess, the courtroom was opened at noon. Entering the courtroom at 12.21, the bench read the ruling in the absence of the detained lawyers and their counsel to the two pretrial releasee lawyers, more than one hundred gendarmerie duty officers, the defendants’ relatives and journalists. As the presiding judge read the judgment, lawyers outside the courtroom protested against the court with the slogan, “Revolutionary lawyers cannot be taken into surrender” and applause.
Presiding judge Gürlek announced the judgment saying, “In the absence of any other matter to be examined, the open hearing has been ended.” Sentencing the pretrial releasee lawyers Ahmet Mandacı, Zehra Özdemir, Ayşegül Çağatay, Yağmur Ereren, Didem Baydar Ünsal and Yaprak Türkmen on the count of “knowingly and willingly aiding the organization,” the court made a reduction to the sentences of Ahmet Mandacı and Zehra Özdemir for attending the hearing and sentenced them to two years thirteen months and fifteen days imprisonment and ordered the time they had spent in detention to be deducted from the sentences. In conjunction with the judgment, Mandacı’s house arrest and Özdemir’s requirement to sign on ended, but a ban on leaving the country was imposed on both. The court made no reduction to the sentences of the other pretrial releasee defendants, Çağatay, Ereren, Baydar Ünsal and Türkmen, and handed them down jail terms of three years and nine months each. The court complied with the prosecution recommendation and ordered the severing of the cases of unapprehended Oya Aslan and Günay Dağ on the grounds that their defences had not been heard and the non-closure of the cases.
Handing down an 18 ¾ years’ sentence to detained defendant Barkın Timtik on the count of “organization management” and ordering the continuation of his detention, the court imposed jail terms on the other eleven lawyers on the count of “organization membership.” Sentencing Özgür Yılmaz and Ebru Timtik, against whom arrest warrants are outstanding, to 13 ½ years, Şükriye Erden to 12 years, Süleyman Gökten to 10 ½ years and Naciye Demir to 9 years, the court ordered the continuation of the arrest warrants.
While handing down sentences to the detained defendants of 12 years to Behiç Aşçı, 10 years and 15 months to Selçuk Kozağaçlı, 10 ½ years to Engin Gökoğlu and Aytaç Ünsal and 9 years to Ayçan Çiçek, the court ordered the continuation of their detention. An 8 year prison sentence was handed down to pretrial releasee defendant Ezgi Çakır. Çakır was ordered to be placed under house arrest because she has a small child and her husband is on the run.
Following the judgment, the defendants’ lawyers made a statement in front of the courtroom:
ÇHD Istanbul Branch Chair Gökmen Yeşil: “The arrests, detention and trial proceedings had absolutely nothing in any way to do with the law and no prosecution activity was conducted here. Nor was it judges who conducted the proceedings named a trial. What is clear is that officers appointed to announce their judgment entered the room named the courtroom and imposed hefty sentences on all of our colleagues.”
Urfa Bar Association Chair Abdullah Öncel: “We as a bar association came assuming there to be a trial here. But we saw that there was no trial and the principle of a fair trial was severely violated. We saw that the presumption of innocence was violated. What is on trial here is not Selçuk Kozağaçlı and his colleagues, but the legal profession and lawyers in Turkey.”
Attorney Several Ballıkaya: “What is tragic is not these sentences, what is tragic is the state the judiciary and defence have fallen into. As of the first day Akın Gürlek was appointed to the court, he has focused purely on handing down sentences in this case and he was appointed for this purpose. This court’s conscience has dried up. The court meted out three days’ rough treatment to the detained lawyers knowing full well that they had been on hunger strike for 55 days. Judgment was passed without lawyers and defences, with no evidence gathered and no witnesses heard. This was not a court. This was a sentence handed down to people who had virtually been forcibly consigned to a captive camp. What Akın Gürlek did was to abolish the rules of law. However, we will continue our struggle.”
CHP Parliamentarian Mahmut Tanal: “The court departed from humanist penal law and virtually applied enemy penal law. A judgment imposed by a court at which enemy penal law is applied is not a just judgment. The principle of a fair trail and the presumption of innocence were violated. This trial trampled on justice, the law and human rights. A bench must not toy with the law to this extent. Playing with the law is playing with fire. Somebody who plays with fire gets their hand burnt.”
Speaking on behalf of the foreign delegations, Italian Penal Law Attorney Fabio Marcelli: “We witnessed here how the rules of general law and international law were violated here. We saw how the universal rules of law were demolished. We saw how an independent trial and the right of defence were violated. We saw that the trial did not comply with the rules of law and they were demolished. We think all the defendants must be released immediately.”
ÇHD General Secretary Nergis Tuba Aslan: “This specially-constituted, specially-appointed bench presided over by Akın Gürlek retains no connection with the law. Selçuk Kozağaçlı told them to their face and I repeat: Akın Gürlek and his accompanying judges, all prosecutors and all the police who came into contact with this case are members of an organized crime syndicate.”
(Translated by Tim Drayton)
Bülent Falakaoğlu
Hakkı Özdal
