Report by Ankara Bar Association Regarding Allegations of Torture in Custody

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The Ankara Bar Association has prepared a report regarding the allegations of torture in custody in the Financial Crimes Investigation Bureau of the Ankara Directorate General of Security.

Signed by the Center for Lawyers' Rights, Prison Council and Center for Human Rights affiliated with the Ankara Bar Association, the report has shared detailed information on the allegations of torture, including the accounts of the ones who claim that they were tortured in custody.

'They were forced to sign depositions by torture'

On May 26, 2019, Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) Kocaeli MP Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu posted a message on his Twitter account and said, "There are allegations of torture in Ankara Security."

In the following days, it was reported in the news that around 100 diplomats, who were previously discharged from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by a statutory decree and were being held in custody in the Financial Crimes Investigation Bureau, were tortured in detention.

Among the allegations of torture were "beating the detained until they pass out, making them watch the ones harassed and tortured, at least four incidents of torture incompatible with human dignity, referral of a beaten diplomat to hospital and the failure of the doctors to report it."

It has been further claimed that "the torture is still continuing and the detained have been forced to sign depositions by torture."

Battery and threat with sexual torture

Lawyers from the Ankara Bar Association visited the ones detained in the Financial Crimes Investigation Bureau on May 27. Based on this visitation, the lawyers have then prepared a report on the allegations, which they have also published on the official website of the bar.

Sharing detailed information about the allegations of torture, the report has made a series of evaluations, including the following:

"All of the six people that were met stated that they were brought to meetings under the name of 'interviews', forced to be confessors and subjected to threats and insults. They indicated that they were taken to interviews more than once and subjected to psychological pressure during the interviews. They added that they can identify the interviewers if they see them.

"Five of these six people stated that they were subjected to torture and ill treatment outside these interviews. One person recounted the incident of torture that s/he witnessed.

"Five people who have asserted that they were subjected to torture and maltreatment in detention have recounted the following:

"They were taken from the prison wards where they were held and brought to somewhere at the ground floor of the Financial Crimes Investigation Bureau of the Ankara Provincial Directorate General of Security; they were forced into a room with 'No entry' written on it and taken to a dark room afterwards; the ones who brought them to this dark room went out and other people, whose faces they could not clearly see due to darkness, entered the room; the newcomers forced the detained against the wall, closed their eyes, handcuffed them from behind and forced them to kneel; after making them crawl on the floor, they beat them and threatened with sexual torture."

Doctor report of 'There is no mark of battery, force'

The report of the Ankara Bar has also voiced the following allegations:

"They said that the ones who subjected them to torture and ill treatment were not the people that they saw and heard in the Financial Crimes Investigation Bureau and one of these people told the detained, 'We have come from outside, we are a professional team.'

"Five people who stated that they were subjected to torture have also asserted that law enforcement officers were accompanying them during the medical examination and they could not tell the doctor for fear of death.

"One person who said that s/he was tortured recounted that after their period of detention was prolonged, they were taken to medical examination and the doctor who previously wrote down the marks of battery in the report prepared another report which said, 'There is no mark of battery or force.' S/he has added that s/he does not know what happened to the other report."

'Remove the officers from investigation'

Concluding the report, the Ankara Bar Association has made a series of requests, including the following:

"Considering that the law enforcement officers conducting the investigation against the detained might themselves be the suspects of another possible investigation for torture and ill treatment, the officers in question should be removed from the investigation in order to prevent further torture and ill treatment of the detained and maintain the soundness of the investigation." (AS/SD)