Police detain grant holder of Kurdish news agency

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Ferhat Çelik, grant holder of the Mezopotamya Agency (MA), was detained today (March 14) in İstanbul.

The journalist announced his detention on Twitter, saying, "At the Feriköy Police Station, where I came to give a statement, I was detained on the grounds that there was a warrant against me in another investigation."

In another tweet a couple of hours later, Çelik said he was released after giving a statement to prosecutors at the İstanbul Courthouse in Çağlayan.

Journalists working for pro-Kurdish news outlets have faced increased legal harassment since June 2022, when 22 media employees were detained during house raids in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakır. Sixteen of them, including MA journalists, have been in pre-trial detention since then, without an indictment.

In a separate investigation, nine journalists working for MA and JINNEWS, another Kurdish and women-focused agency, were remanded in custody in late October. They and two others who are not under arrest were indicted in mid-February, facing up to 15 years in prison for "being a member of a terrorist organization."

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(HA/VK)