Ahmet Şık Applies to ECtHR

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Cumhuriyet daily correspondent Ahmet Şık being kept under arrest for 133 days, has applied to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) demanding an order that he be immediately released.

According to the report of Cumhuriyet daily, Ahmet Şık in his application has recalled that he had also been arrested in 2011 due to a book he had written on the organization of the Gülen Community within the police, stayed in prison for 375 days and that an order to pull his book off the shelves before it was even published.

The application also pointed out to the fact that last month he had been acquitted in that case brought by the Gülen Community, which has been organized within the police and judiciary, and added with regards to his arrest:

"There is a parallelism between Ahmet Şık's arrest and the arrests of Cumhuriyet daily writers and executives. The arrests of the writers, executives and attorneys of Cumhuriyet daily reveal that the arrest of the applicant was not a single case but indicated a systematic 'judicial harassment'".

Request to combine applications

Recalling that the application he had made to the Constitutional Court 3,5 months ago had still not been examined, Şık in his application demanded that the applications submitted by imprisoned writers, executives and attorneys of Cumhuriyet daily who got arrested two months before Şık to the ECtHR be combined with Şık's application.

Complaining of a violation of his right to freedom, safety and his freedom of speech as well as a violation of Article 18 of the convention requiring that the restrictions of the rights and freedoms in the convention cannot be applied out of the prescribed purposes, Şık claimed compensation in amount of 20,000 Euros and demanded an order that he immediately be released. (EA/DG)