Impunity for Soma massacre, prison sentence for protesters

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The court has announced its ruling in the retrial over the mine explosion that claimed the lives of 301 workers in Soma, Manisa on May 14, 2014.

Standing trial for "causing death and injury with conscious negligence", Soma Coal Enterprises Inc. Executive Board Chair Can Gürkan has been sentenced to 20 years in prison. Haluk Evinç, a member of the company's executive board, has been acquitted. Mining engineers Efkan Kurt and Adem Osmanoğlu have been sentenced to 12 years, 6 months.

None of the defendants is arrested. The massacre has ended in impunity, but the ones who protested the massacre are given prison sentences.

CLICK - Soma mine explosion case: Mining company's board chair sentenced to 20 years

Lawsuit against Soma protesters

Çağdaş Oğul Arı, the Mersin Yenişehir District Executive of the Left Party, was only one of the people who joined the protests against the massacre on May 15, 2014 and were given a prison sentence. A lawsuit was filed against Arı, together with his 10 friends, due to the protest that they joined on May 15, 2014, a day after the Soma mine explosion claimed 301 lives.

10 years in prison on 4 charges

The trial was held in 2015 and Çağdaş Oğul Arı was sentenced to 10 years in prison on four different "offenses" charged, namely "damaging public property", "resisting an official on duty", "attending a demonstration armed" and "unarmed." As he was still 17 years old while the trial was ongoing, his prison sentence was reduced to 5 years, 6 months.

The file was taken to the Court of Cassation, it was upheld 7 years later and an arrest warrant was issued against Arı.

While he should have been on supervised release, the prosecutor demanded Arı's arrest. He was arrested on June 4, 2021. Following an 8-day imprisonment, Arı was released upon his attorney's objection.

Arı arrested 7 years later

For Arı, "it is not about eight days" because, as he tells bianet, "he should not have been arrested even for a day or hour."

He adds: "This is not only about the eight days; this is injustice. The ones who massacred the workers are released, while the ones who object to the massacre of workers are arrested or penalized.

"Even if it is for a day, I was falsely arrested in an unjust manner. Moreover, I was preparing for the [university entrance] exam, my marks were good, I wanted to study law. That was what I was studying for. Most probably, I would win it, but now, I am deprived of my chance to study law.

'I cannot get a license because of my prison term'

"As I have a prison term of over 2 years, I will be unable to get a license from the Bar Association. In other words, it is not limited to being arrested for 8 days or being sentenced to 5 years. It might perhaps lead to other problems in the future. I had prepared for the exam over the past year; even if I take the exam now, there is no other department that I want to choose.

"Moreover, the file is full of contradictions. It says 'joining a protest armed and unarmed.' The contradiction starts here. How could I possibly do both of them? What they mean by 'armed' is the flagpole or stones. I am being punished because I protested the death of 301 people and I took a stance against the death of people. And the punishment for this is 10 years.

"But, they 'reduced' the sentence because I was a child back then. They said, 'Let's give him 5 years.' They have taken away not those 8 days from me, but my purpose, for which I had strived for a year. Now, I don't know what I will do, I don't know what I will choose to study."

What happened?

On May 13, 2014, an explosion in the Soma coal mine in the western Manisa province caused an underground fire in the mine, which burned until May 15.

301 workers were killed and 162 were injured in what was the worst mine incident in the country's history. The trial began on April 13, 2015, and ended on July 11, 2018. There were 45 defendants and 162 injured workers as victim plaintiffs in the case.

Akhisar Heavy Penal Court sentenced Soma Coal Enterprises Inc. Board Chair Can Gürkan to 15 years in prison for "killing by negligence" and banned him from mining business for three years.

Soma Coal Enterprises Inc. General Director Ramazan Doğru, mining engineer and Deputy Operations Manager İsmail Adalı, Operations Manager Akın Çelik and mining engineer Ertan Arsoy were given jail terms from 15 years to 22 years and 6 months. Thirty-seven defendants, including Alp Gürkan, the owner of the company and the father of Can Gürkan, were acquitted.

İzmir Regional Court of Justice 14th Penal Chamber upheld the prison sentences for the five defendants on April 19, 2019. Can Gürkan was released from prison on the same day.

The Court of Cassation 12th Penal Chamber reversed the decision on September 30, 2020. It stated that Can Gürkan targeted increased production without taking required safety measures and setting up a ventilation system despite knowing that there was a high risk of fire. It stated that Gürkan, Doğru Çelik and Adalı should be sentenced for "causing deaths by probable intent" 301 times and "causing injury by probable intent" 261 times.

All arrested defendants of the Soma case were released on February 5, 2021.

In the retrial that started upon the reversal of the previous ruling by the 12th Penal Chamber of the Court of Cassation, the fourth hearing was held at the Manisa Akhisar Heavy Penal Court on June 16, 2021.

Standing trial on charge of "causing death and injury with conscious negligence", Soma Coal Enterprises Inc. Executive Board Chair Can Gürkan has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Haluk Evinç, a member of the mining company's executive board detected to be the manager responsible for emergency action plan in the expert report, has been acquitted. Mining engineers Efkan Kurt and Adem Osmanoğlu have been sentenced to 12 years, 6 months each.

None of the defendants have been arrested.

(RT/SD)