Two Turkish journalists, convicted of violating a law on the secret services, announced today on Twitter that they are returning to prison after losing their appeal.
They were tried in 2020 for publishing information that an intelligence agent had been killed in Libya, after Ankara had backed the UN-recognized Libyan government.
In September 2020, an Istanbul court sentenced Aydin Keser, Ferhat Celik and Murat Agirel, journalists of the Yenicag newspaper, to four years and eight months in prison for violating the Turkish Intelligence Service (MIT) law.
OdaTV network director Barry Pechlivan and reporter Julia Kilins were sentenced to three years and nine months in prison on the same charges.
Murat Agirel and Baris Pehlivan announced via Twitter that they were returning to prison.
“For the third time … we are here, we are going … Again,” wrote Baris Pehlivan, posting a selfie where he appears smiling in front of the courthouse in Istanbul.
“I am returning to prison because I described as witnesses those who testified about their homeland,” Murat Agirel wrote on Twitter. “Those who were not able to refute what I wrote believe that they can silence me with injustice.”
NGOs systematically denounce the plethora of violations of press freedom in Turkey, especially after the 2016 coup attempt, which was accompanied by the arrest of dozens of journalists and the closure of a number of media outlets deemed hostile to the Turkish regime.
Turkey ranks 153rd out of 180 in Reporters Without Borders’ press freedom ranking.
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