The philanthropist Osman Kavala has been living his own “Midnight Express” in Turkish prisons for at least four years without being convicted.
A Turkish court ruled Monday that Kavala should remain in prison, a case that has strained Ankara’s relations with its Western allies.
The Council of Europe announced this month that its commission had referred the Kavala case at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in order to decide whether Turkey has failed to comply with its obligation to comply with a previous court ruling, more than two years ago, which required its immediate release.
President Tayyip Erdogan said then, answering a relevant question about the decision, that “Turkey will not respect the decision of the Council of Europe, if Europe does not respect the Turkish courts”.
A Turkish court today ruled that Kavala, one of Turkey’s most prominent detainees, should remain in custody and set the next hearing for March 21st. Kavala was arrested on October 18, 2017.
In 2020, Kavala was acquitted of charges related to demonstrations that took place across the country in 2013. Hours later, another court ordered his arrest on the basis of a charge of attempting to overthrow the constitutional order linked to a coup attempt in 2016.
That court later decided to release him on this charge, but ordered his detention on a charge of espionage in the same case, a move that critics say was intended to circumvent the ECtHR ruling.
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