Court imposes access block on bianet report on woman shot during police raid

Click to read the article in Turkish

A penal judgeship in İstanbul has ordered an access block on a bianet report titled "Police officer who filmed the shooting of Dilek Doğan: 'Special Operations officer shot her by mistake'."

The judgeship issued the order after an application by the Ministry of Interior General Directorate of Security.

Submitting a petition to the judgeship, bianet's attorney Meriç Eyüboğlu appealed against the order and requested the lift of the access block.

"Objectivity was maintained in the presentation of the blocked news report; no exaggerating or wrong comments that exceed the limits of news were made, no accusatory, criminating and improperly offending words were used, and no violation of the rules of honesty was made," says the petition.

"Contrary to what is claimed, the report is not of the nature of an attack on personal rights and has no such intention."

In this case, where rights conflict, priority should be given to freedom of the press and expression, Eyüboğlu further stated.

"The decision to block access despite this is 'censorship on the press' and is against the Constitution the European Convention on Human

The report

Police shot Doğan during a raid in her home in Küçük Armutlu, İstanbul on October 18, 2015. She lost her life at the hospital a week later. A court sentenced the defendant police officer to 6 years in 3 months in prison for killing by gross negligence. The case is currently pending the Court of Cassation.

The blocked report was published on March 6, 2017, and included camera footage recorded by police during the incident. The police officer who was operating the camera was saying the Special Operation officers shot Doğan "by mistake."

The footage was watched at a hearing of the case of Doğan's killing on March 8, 2017.

CLICK - Officer who recorded Dilek Doğan's shooting: 'It was a mistake'

Conversations in the footage in brief:

"The Special Operations shot a person there.

Take handcuffs and come.

Hello brother, good luck, this is Barış from the technical. We are in Sarıyer now. The Special Operations shot a person by mistake. It's pretty messed up. I can't reach Commissioner Cihad ... Yes, brother. We called him, we called... It would be good if you called him one more time.

Dilek, Dilek...

Commissioner, there was an address in Baltalimanı. The Special Operations shot a person there. It's trouble commissioner ... for your information.

Man, how can the Special Operations do this..."

Why was it blocked?

The İstanbul 10th Penal Judgeship of Peace stated that by publishing the video in question, police officers who did not have a case or investigation against them were "made a target" and their personal rights were violated.

Attorney Eyüboğlu said , "Both this reason and verdict are completely wrong."

In the petition of appeal, she noted that the faces of officers are not clearly seen in the video and the court ordered an access block to the entire article because of the video.

"The verdict was given for the report, not for the 2 minutes and 45 seconds of footage. However, based on the reasoning of the Court's decision, it is not possible to prevent the entire report, namely the written news text," the attorney stated.

Saying that the report was accurate and in the benefit of the public, the attorney demanded overturn of the order for an access block. (AS/VK)