Saturday Mothers/People Call for Justice in Çorlu Derailment Case

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Saturday Mothers/People have released a statement on the Çorlu train derailment trial, the first hearing of which was concluded minutes after it began today (July 3).

CLICK - 'Families Demand for Justice Responded with Torment'

Twenty-five people, including seven children, were killed and 340 were injured in a train derailment in Çorlu district of the northwestern province of Tekirdağ on July 8, 2018.

The board of the Çorlu 1st Heavy Penal Court decided to withdraw from the case upon the allegation that "the relatives of the deceased were battered upon an instruction by the court." It sent the case file to the Çorlu 2nd Heavy Penal Court for examination.

Relatives of the deceased were battered by the police before the hearing.

"The families and the lawyers were beaten. They shut the door in their face in the courthouse, where they went to seek justice," the Saturday Mothers/People said.

"We call Minister of Justice Gül, who got lawyers beaten and Minister of Interior Soylu, who got mourning families beaten, to retreat into borders of law.

"We experienced, we know; all these are to destroy the determination of the families for want justice, to make them feel desperate, to make them inured to injustice, giving up on their loved ones whom they lost, to silence them!

"Because they fear the families who follow the case. They fear their power which comes from their righteousness, their love for their lost ones, their innocence against the criminals. This is why they become aggressive.

"Whatever they do, innocence will win at the end; you, who strive for justice, will win. All families who experience the grief of losing a child will win. We should just lay claim to our pain. With solidarity..." (AS/VK)