The witness named with initials H.B.A., who was the sole reason for the detention of Selçuk Mızraklı, the Mayor of Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality, who has been in prison for four years, was revealed to be a police officer.
Selçuk Mızraklı was elected as the Mayor of Diyarbakır Metropolitan Municipality with over 60% of the vote in the local elections in March 2019 in the major Kurdish majority city of the country. He was removed from office on August 19, 2019, by a decision of the Ministry of Interior, and a trustee was appointed in his place.
Having been removed from his elected position, Mızraklı staged a sit-in with the people of Diyarbakır in front of the Metropolitan Municipality for days. Two months later, on October 21, 2019, he was taken into custody, and on the following day, October 22, he was arrested on charges of "being a member of an organization" and "making propaganda for an organization" based on the allegations of a witness named H.B.A.
His detention was appealed multiple times, but the appeals were rejected. Despite the fact that the allegations of H.B.A., which were used as the grounds for his arrest, were refuted with official documents, Mızraklı was sentenced to 9 years, 4 months, and 15 days in prison by the court.
The case was taken to the Court of Cassation, which overturned the sentence. The trial was resumed, but this time, the statements of another confessing witness were added to the case. Meanwhile, it was revealed that H.B.A. had been working within the police organization since 2012.
Selçuk Mızraklı, a medical doctor, will mark his fourth year in detention on October 22.
Lawyer Muhsin Bilal talked to bianet about what has been happening in the Mızraklı case over the past four years.
Her drew attention to an "Information Report" dated October 16, 2018. In this report, it is stated that H.B.A. attended the Democratic Society Congress in early 2012, worked at the Veni Vidi Hospital during this period, and provided regular information to law enforcement agencies about the organization and its members from that date onwards. It is also mentioned that after settling in the Kızıltepe district in 2016, H.B.A. continued to provide information to the Mardin Police Department about the organization and the Nusaybin operations.
These facts go beyond H.B.A. being a confessing witness; they prove that H.B.A. has been working as a member of the police organization since the end of 2012 and has been employed in that capacity, Bilal says.
No single piece of information about Mızraklı before
From 2013 to 2016, H.B.A. regularly and consistently provided information to law enforcement agencies about the organization's structures in the urban areas and their activities. On October 16, 2018, H.B.A. provided detailed information to the Kayseri Police Department TEM Branch officers. During the time when H.B.A. worked at Diyarbakır Veni Vidi Hospital, he provided information about individuals and situations related to the organization intermittently but did not provide a single piece of information about Selçuk Mızraklı.
What happened?
Witness H.B.A., in his statement dated March 20, 2019, claimed that in late 2012 or early 2013, one morning when he went to work at the intensive care unit, an organization member brought from a rural area with complaints of intestinal obstruction was operated on, a part of his intestines was cut, but he did not see this, he only heard about it, and the organization member who was in intensive care left the hospital around 10:30 in the morning.
During the trial process, it was proven that H.B.A. did not work at the mentioned hospital in 2012-2013 and that a major surgery like removing a part of the intestine could not be done in such a short time, as claimed by H.B.A., but these facts were not taken into account.
Sentence without any evidence
According to Bilal, the court sentenced Mızraklı, accused of performing a surgery to an illegal organization member, without any evidence and solely based on the statements of the confessing witness, to 9 years, 4 months, and 15 days in prison at the upper limit.
While overturning the court's decision, the Court of Cassation also revealed that all the documents brought to the court regarding the matters it wanted to be investigated unquestionably demonstrated that the conviction and detention were not based on law.
New witness and new charges made
After all the allegations that caused Selçuk Mızraklı to be convicted collapsed and all the evidence on which the decision was based became invalid, a new confessing witness was found and new charges were made in the ongoing trial, and Mızraklı's detention continues.
Lawyer Bilal is of the opinion that it is the political authority and not the courts who decide on the detention of his client Selçuk Mızraklı.
(RT/PE)
