Aggravated Life Imprisonment Demanded for Journalists Dündar, Gül

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Indictment on Cumhuriyet daily Chief Editor Can Dündar and its Ankara Representative Erdem Gül arrested for making news report of MİT (Turkish National Intelligence Organization) trucks and releasing videos of it.

Gül and Dündar allegedly committed crimes of “Procuring information as to state security”, “Abolishing government of Republic of Turkey or attempting to limit or prevent it from doing its duty”, and “deliberately aiding armed terror organization without being a member of it”.

Utku: Journalists are obliged to inform public an incident qualifying as news

Bülent Utku, the attorney of Dündar and Gül speaking to bianet said as follows as the indictment:

"There is not a single action attached to our clients other than articles they wrote. Thus, they are obliged to inform public an incident qualifying as news regardless of considering who benefits it. This is what they did.

"Besides, prosecution wants the trials to be secretly conducted. That is obviously an effort to hide journalist identity of our clients". 

What had happened?

Prosecution was started as to the article published with the headline “Here are the weapons Erdoğan claim to not exist” on May 29 over “Procuring information as to state security”, “Political and military espionage”, “Declaring confidential information”, “Propagandizing terror organization”.  

Chief Public Prosecutor Hadi Salihoğlu had declared the prosecution by press release.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had personally filed a criminal complaint and requested Dündar to be sentenced to one aggravated life imprisonment, one life imprisonment and 42 years in prison for “targeting state interests by using images contrary to facts”. 

Erdoğan on a live broadcast on TRT had said, "I guess the person who made this special news will heavily pay for it".

Dündar and Gül have been imprisoned as of November 26.