A lawyer representing Önder Asan, a private school teacher who was abducted by unidentified individuals in Ankara on April 1, has been detained for rejecting to sign a false testimony prepared by the police on behalf of his client Asan, Aktifhaber news portal reported on Tuesday.
It has recently emerged that Asan was handed over to the Ankara Police Department’s Bureau of Organized Crime on May 12 by the individuals who allegedly abducted him.
Asan, as a philosophy teacher at a secondary school which was shut down by the government due to its links to the Gülen movement, suspiciously disappeared on April 1.
Asan’s wife Fatma Asan tweeted that she found her husband’s car parked in the Şentepe neighborhood of Ankara with its tires slashed. She also said police and the prosecutor in charge are so reluctant to investigate the case that not even a single CCTV camera in Şentepe was examined for possible recordings of her husband.
After a 42 days of media and social media campaign by his wife and other people, Önder Asan was reported to be in police custody at the Ankara Police Department’s Bureau of Organized Crime on May 12.
Sezgin Tanrıkulu, a deputy for the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), tweeted on Sunday by mentioning Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ that: “[Önder Asan] was handed over to the police after he was kept in an unknown place. Is there any investigation against those who abducted and withheld [Asan]?”
According to Aktifhaber, Asan’s lawyer, Burak Çolak, who went to see his client at the police headquarters, was asked to sign a false testimony that did not belong to Asan. Police detained the lawyer when he rejected to sign the false testimony.
CHP’s Tanrıkulu raised the issue from his Twitter account on Tuesday. By mentioning Justice Minister Bozdağ, he asked: “Are the claims that Burak Çolak, lawyer of Önder Asan, was detained when he rejected a testimony “prepared” by the police?” (turkishminute.com) May 16, 2017
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