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Wednesday 23 December 2020
Judgment in Turkey
Journalist Dündar receives a long prison sentence
The journalist Can Dündar is on trial in Turkey due to an explosive journalistic report. Now the verdict has been reached: more than 27 years in prison. Dündar himself is not present at the trial, he is in German exile.
Can Dündar, a journalist exiled in Germany, has been sentenced to more than 27 years in prison in Turkey. Dündar received a sentence of 18 years and nine months for having obtained, according to the judges, state secrets for the purposes of military and political espionage. The court also sentenced him to eight years and nine months in prison for supporting terrorism, according to protocol.
Therefore, he was acquitted of the secret information disclosure charge. The court also ordered Dündar’s arrest again. Dündar’s lawyers boycotted the trial in protest. They had justified the decision in advance by stating that they did not want to legitimize a judgment that had already been politically decided.
The background to the proceedings against Dündar is a 2015 newspaper report in which the government-critical newspaper “Cumhuriyet” published secret information that was supposed to prove government arms deliveries to rebels in Syria. At the time, Dündar was editor-in-chief of “Cumhuriyet”.
Dündar was sentenced to more than five years in prison for treason of publishing secrets in 2016 and was acquitted of the espionage charges. However, the Ankara Supreme Court reversed the ruling in 2018, declaring that the new proceedings against Dündar should be expanded to include espionage.
More recently, the court had ruled that Dündar was volatile. As a result, his assets in Turkey were confiscated, according to the lawyers. Dündar has lived in Germany since the end of the summer of 2016. Various proceedings against the journalist are underway in Turkey.
