Lawyer Kozağaçlı Bids Farewell to Father While Handcuffed

Photo: Twitter, ÇHD

Click to read the article in Turkish (1) (2)

Selçuk Kozağaçlı, the Chair of the Progressive Lawyers Association (ÇHD) and a People's Law Bureau (HHB) lawyer, has attended his father Ayhan Kozağaçlı's funeral.

Kozağaçlı lost his life on January 26 and was committed to the ground yesterday (January 28).

Selçuk Kozağaçlı bid farewell to his father while he was handcuffed to a plainclothes gendarme.

The People's Law Bureau said in a tweet, "They have brought Selçuk Kozağaçlı to his father's funeral with around 80 gendarmes. He is handcuffed to a plainclothes gendarme. Extraordinary measures are taken. They are all over the street. Selçuk's morale is high as always. We have sent him all our friends' greetings."

Denouncement from the IAPL

The International Association of People's Lawyers (IAPL) has released a statement regarding the funeral. Mentioning the criticism on social media, the statement said that many interpreted what happened "as the punishment of a lawyer due to his critical views of the government."

"Kozağaçlı angered the government by representing two academics [Nuriye Gülmen and Semih Özakça] who were fired from their jobs by government decrees, victims of a mine disaster in Soma and many other persecuted people" the IAPL stated.

Being founded in 2000, the aim of the IAPL is to gather lawyers involved in the legal support of collective struggles for people's rights and in situations of gross rights violations, according to its website.

What happened?

Most of the lawyers, who are members of the Progressive Lawyers Association (ÇHD) and People's Law Bureau (HHB), were detained during the police raids against their bureaus on September 12, 2017, and were arrested on September 20. Kozağaçlı was arrested on November 13, 2017.

At their hearing held on September 14, 2018, the İstanbul 37th Heavy Penal Court ruled for the release of the lawyers Ahmet Mandacı, Aycan Çiçek, Ayşegül Çağatay, Aytaç Ünsal, Barkın Timtik, Behiç Aşçı, Didem Baydar Ünsal, Ebru Timtik, Engin Gökoğlu, Naciye Demir, Özgür Yılmaz, Selçuk Kozağaçlı, Süleyman Gökten, Şükriye Erden, Yağmur Ererken, Yaprak Türkmen and Zehra Özdemir.

The court ruled for their release with reference to their duration of arrest and legal precedents of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and on the ground that the classification of the offence has changed and the defendants are lawyers and were arrested as a measure.

The arrest warrants issued for the fugitive lawyers Günay Dağ andOya Aslan, who have been tried in the same case, are still in effect.

The court also ruled that the lawyers shall be released on probation.

However, one day after the verdict of release issued for the lawyers, an arrest warrant was issued for them upon the objection of the Prosecutor's Office. As of September 17, five of the released lawyers were arrested again.

The next hearing of the lawyers will be held on February 19-20, 2019.

(EKN/VK)