Writer Nevin Berktaş Convicted - Deduction Dismissed

Writer Nevin Berktaş (52) was sentenced to imprisonment of ten months on charges of "propaganda for an illegal organization". The charges were based on her book entitled "Difficult places that challenge the faith: Prison Cells". The book describes the process of resistance in the prison cells where she was incarcerated herself during the time of the military coup in 1980. Due to a calculation mistake, Berktaş was imprisoned five years and seven months longer than the law actually stipulated.

Bertaş was arrested on 3 November. She requested to take the extra time she served in prison because of the calculation mistake into account for the recent sentence. The court dismissed her request. Her lawyer appealed to the superior court of the Istanbul 9^th High Criminal Court.

Berktaş was convicted after the military coup on 12 September 1980 on charges of membership of the Revolutionary Communist Union of Turkey. She received two prison sentences in 1986 and was in jail for 22 years. She was released in 2007. The writer filed a compensation claim because she had been imprisoned for an additional five years and seven months due to a calculation mistake. In the meantime, she was sentenced to imprisonment of ten months on the grounds of her book she wrote when she was in prison. She was imprisoned again this November. Thereupon, she started a legal struggle to have her extra time in prison taken into account.

4 February 1981

On 4 Feburary 1981, Berktaş was taken into police custody for alleged membership of an illegal organization. She was released in July the same year. She was arrested again on 25 February 1983 and taken to prison. On 15 May 1986, the Adana 6^th Army Corps Command Martial Law Court handed down an 18 years and ten months prison sentence to her on charges of membership of two different illegal organizations. She remained in prison for about 7.5 years and was then released conditionally on a probation period of ten years.

Four years later, Berktaş was again taken into custody because of alleged membership of an illegal armed organization. The Konya State Security Court sentenced her to six years and eight months behind bars in 1995. The conditional release was reversed and added to the sentence. With these additional five years and 216 days the sentence added up to 12.5 years. She was handed down another prison sentence of three years in 1998 because explosives and weapons had been found when she was arrested.

Lawyer found the mistake

Lawyer İnayet Aksu reviewed her file after 13 years. He realised that his client had served an extra time of five years and seven months in prison due to a calculation mistake. Lawyer Aksu applied to the Adana 6^th High Criminal Court. He informed the court that the partial amnesty law enforced in 1991 had not been applied to his client. Applying the law, the five-year seven-month sentence handed down to Berktaş would be lifted.

Subsequent to the review, the 18-year four-month sentence decreed by the Martial Law Court was mitigated to seven years and six months. The court decided that the sentence served from 1983-1990 was decisive and to deduct five years and seven months from the second crime. Berktaş was released from prison six months before her sentence would have been expired.

As soon as she was released, the writer filed a compensation claim for the extra time she had to serve in prion.

Sentence finalized

After Berktaş was sentenced to ten months behind bars by reason of her book, her lawyer applied to the Istanbul 14^th High Criminal Court, claiming that his client had served the ten months already since she had been kept in prison for an additional five years and seven months. Berktaş was imprisoned last month before the case on the deduction was decided. One month later, the court decreed that she "could not claim a deduction". The writer's lawyer appealed at the superior court. (BB/EÖ/VK)

* Source: Milliyet newspaper.