Deniz Yücel had been “held in pre-trial detention in the absence of plausible reasons to suspect that they have committed a criminal offense,” said the Court.
Le Monde
The case had renovated between Berlin and Ankara. Turkey, which had incarcerated in 2017 and 2018 the former German daily correspondent Die Welt, Deniz Yücel, was sentenced by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) Tuesday, January 25th. The pan-European court estimated that Ankara had violated his “right to freedom and safety”, “his right to compensation in case of illegal detention” and “his freedom of expression”, “she explains in a communiqué . Turkey will have to pay him 13,300 euros of compensation.
The German-Turkish journalist, who had covered for the German Conservative newspaper the widespread repression after the failed coup attempt in Turkey in July 2016 against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, “was put and kept in pre-trial detention In the absence of plausible reasons to suspect that they have committed a criminal offense, “says the court.
“The deprivation of liberty” of the 48-year-old journalist “is analyzed [as] an” interference “in the exercise by the latter of his right to freedom of expression”, continues the pan-European court. It recalls “that the remand for critical votes creates multiple negative effects, both for the person being detained as for the whole society”. Because “inflicting a measure resulting in deprivation of freedom (…) inevitably produces a deterrent on freedom of expression by intimidating civil society and reducing divergent voices to silence,” said the judicial arm of the Council. Europe.
Condemned for “terrorist propaganda”
The arrest in February 2017 from Deniz Yücel had raised a wave of indignation and mobilization in Germany and poisoned the relations between Berlin and Ankara, two countries linked in particular by the presence of three million Turks in Germany.
Finally released in February 2018, Deniz Yücel had been allowed to leave Turkey for Germany, leading to a thaw of relations between the two countries.
In May 2019, the Turkish Constitutional Court had ruled that it had suffered a violation of its right to freedom and safety as well as its right to freedom of expression and the press. But in July 2020, a tribunal of Istanbul condemned him by abandonment to two years, nine months and 22 days in prison for “terrorist propaganda” on behalf of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), qualified as a “terrorist group” “By Ankara and his Western allies, at the end of a trial that had aroused new diplomatic tensions between Turkey and Germany.
Turkey is at 153 e place in the world ranking of the press freedom of the Non-Governmental Reporters Without Borders.
In November, the ECHR had already condemned Turkey for the “arbitrary” pre-trial detention of 427 magistrates, five years after the massive purge in the administration, the army and the Turkish intellectual circles which had followed the shot of Missed state.