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European rights court condemns Turkey for torturing lawyers
Warning: this was a reeeeeal sloooooow loading pageSTRASBOURG : The European Court of Human Rights condemned Turkey for torturing lawyers or treating them in an "inhuman and degrading" manner to force them to confess to having aided Kurdish separatists. Not that Iâm against lawyer-torture, mind you. But this is the sort of stuff that made the Europeans stiff the Turks over membership in the EU. Since the Kurdish revolution will probably be back in a big way in less than 10 years, and the EU is real proud of its moral superiority to everyone else, this sort of thing would be embarrasing from an EU member. A group of 16 lawyers had complained to the court over their detention in 1993 for alleged involvement in criminal activities and their treatment while in custody. The lawyers said they received death threats and were insulted during their detention, which lasted for between seven and 25 days. Some of them were forced to strip off their clothes, hosed down with ice-cold water or otherwise humiliated to extract their confessions, they said. The court on Thursday ordered Turkey to pay the lawyers from 1,210 to 36,000 euros in pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages. The lawyers said the real reason for their detention was their human rights activities and that they had represented people appearing before Turkeyâs state security courts. They were arrested after security forces extracted a confession from a member of the separatist Kurdistan Workersâ Party (PKK), in which he alleged they had helped Kurdish separatists. The lawyers said they had been held in chilly and wet cells, forced to sleep on the floor, and were even blindfolded from time to time. They were only allowed to visit the bathroom twice a day and received one slice of bread per day as food. The court condemned the "dire conditions of detention -- cold, dark and damp, with inadequate bedding, food and sanitary facilities -- as well as... that they were insulted, humiliated, slapped and terrified into signing any document that was put before them." It also found some of the lawyers had "suffered physical and mental violence at the hands of the gendarmerie during their detention. That ill-treatment had caused them severe pain and suffering and had been particularly serious and cruel," and constituted torture under European rights laws. By a vote of six to one, judges found that Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights, which prohibits torture, inhuman or degrading treament, had been violated. It also condemned Turkey for failing to investigate the allegations of torture and ill-treatment, and unanimously found that the plaintiffsâ right to liberty, security and respect for private and family life had been violated. Posted by: Patrick Phillips 2003-11-14 |
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