He is facing charges of "collaboration with the PKK" under Articles 220 paragraph 7 (membership of an armed organisation) and 314 paragraph 3 (membership of a criminal organisation) of Turkish criminal law. He is currently being held in Diyarbakir jail.
"The hasty accusations the authorities have laid against the journalist are evidence of abusive use of the Turkish criminal code to act against human rights activists and journalists", said Reporters Without Borders. "The imprisonment of Birol Duru is based on badly drawn-up articles, the vagueness of which allows the authorities to attack journalists at will," it added.
Duru is charged with being in possession of a videotape showing Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants attacking a Turkish military vehicle in the village of Eskibalta on 26 July. He is further charged with planning to supply the tape to news agencies and national TV channels. Police in Dinarbey seized his film camera, sound recorder and stills camera so that "the evidence would not be destroyed."
The journalist¹s lawyers have been unsuccessfully trying to secure his release by taking the case to a court in Karlovia, the Bingol correctional tribunal and the court of assizes in Diyarkabir, in succession.
Article 100 of the law on criminal procedure, requires that the accused should remain in custody "if there is a risk of escape, a possibility of destroying, hiding or tampering with evidence or if there is a risk of intimidating witnesses on the part of the accused."
Duru was also charged on 17 November with "denigrating the security forces" under Article 301 of the Turkish criminal code, for publishing a report via the DIHA news agency, in collaboration with the local section of the Turkish human rights organisation (IHD), that accused security forces of burning forests in Bingol and Tunceli, in the south-east of the country.
The court in Diyarbakir has still not reached a decision on Duru's fate, or that of Daimi Acig, a member of the IHD, who was arrested with the journalist on 10 August. The first hearing in the trial was held on 8 December before the 4th chamber of assizes in Diyarkabir. One of Duru¹s lawyers, Servet Ozen, contested the charge, saying that the videotape did not belong to his client, and in any case, it was only a propaganda tape that the organisation had supplied to a journalist. "My client only wanted to inform public opinion about an existing fact," said Ozen.
The case has now been adjourned until 28 December. (EÖ/EA/YE)
