Attorney Yıldırım: They Want to Cover Up Şule Çet Case

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"The other day, in another case, the lip-reading specialist was watching and evaluating images. As far as I know, lip-reading experts can read word by word, cannot read a single sentence, a paragraph. Even in this state, if the lips of the people in the images are read, it will give us a lot of ideas about what happened that night.

Lip-reading experts who can be found for other cases cannot be found for our case. I do not understand that."

Attorney Umur Yıldırım describes the deficiencies he witnessed in the justice system with these words.

Yıldırım, Türkiye kamuoyunun yakından takip ettiği Şule Çet davasında Çet Ailesi'nin avukatlarından. Şule Çet suspiciously fell from the 20th floor of a plaza in Ankara on May 29, 2018.

Ankara Public Prosecutor's Office demanded aggravated life sentence and imprisonment of up to 39 years for defendants Berk Akand and Çağatay Aksu for murder, sexual assault ve and false imprisonment.

Both were arrested as a result of public pressure.

The fourth hearing of the case will take place on Wednesday (October 16).

"Confidentiality order is not applicable"

Yıldırım, the Çet family's attorney, evaluated the process of the case and the defendants' request for a confidentiality decision to bianet.

"The investigation is already confidential, and the prosecution is public. The demands of the defendants were not accepted in that process.

There are two ways to make a confidentiality decision. The first one is 'public safety'. Second, if there is a case of general morality. But neither cases are applicable in this file. Therefore, I do not think that the defendants' demand for confidentiality will be responded positively.

I think the reason for such a confidentiality decision is that they want the case behind closed doors.

"You already know that the defendants were detained twice before this trial. During both detention periods, we were unable to operate the law and neither of the defendants was arrested. However, they were arrested after public pressure.

"In addition, the evidence disappeared in the beginning in this case. We fought a separate struggle to find those evidence and bring them to the case. The prosecutor of the case was changed.

"While this is the case, we cannot accept a judgment behind closed doors. They want to drop this case from the public agenda. But you know that the ECtHR has such decisions. The hearings are held clearly. "

'Public's sense of justice should be established'

"It is also not enough for you to punish the defendants in a court. You need to create a sense that the public's sense of justice has been repaired. You know, from the beginning, this feeling has been damaged in this case. The public should regain this feeling and say 'justice has been achieved'. Only then can we speak of a fair trial. In this case, a feeling should be created that there were no irregularities.

"This video evidence is very important to us. It may change the course of the case and reveal the situation of Berk Akand. That night, the truth can be revealed if the lip reading on those images shows what happened. How can't Turkey, a country of 80 million people, find a lip-reading expert?"

(EMK/VK)