In Turkey, three journalists convicted of violating the law on the secret services were imprisoned on Tuesday February 15, before being released a few hours later. They had already spent several months in preventive detention as part of this case.
With our correspondent in Istanbul, Anne Andlauer
Murat Agirel, Baris Pehlivan and Hülya Kilinç, reporters working for opposition media, were imprisoned in the morning following the confirmation of their convictions on appeal. They were finally released in the evening, after spending several hours behind bars.
Murat Agirel had been sentenced to four years and eight months in detention and his colleagues to three years and nine months. The three journalists were accused of revealing the identity of a secret service agent killed in Libya, where Turkey intervened militarily in 2020 to support the Government of National Unity (GNA). During the trial, journalists dismissed the charges, pointing out that the name of this agent, and that of a colleague killed alongside him, had appeared hundreds of times on social media before they wrote their articles.
” We won’t be silent, we’re not afraid and we’ll never get used to “Said Murat Agirel before entering the courtroom in Istanbul, while Baris Pehlivan recalled that he was entering prison” for the third time for doing journalism “. Hülya Kilinç had, for her part, been imprisoned in Manisa, in western Turkey.