Sedat Sur, a reporter of the Fırat News Agency which is affiliated with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), has been detained on his arrival at İzmir airport after a flight from İstanbul on Wednesday night.
Sur was reportedly handed over to anti-terror police after his detention at airport. Reports suggest that police have seized his personal belongings including mobile phone. Sur was released late in the night after giving a statement in the scope of a lawsuit filed against him in 2009.
Stockholm Center for Freedom, an advocacy group that monitors rights violations in Turkey, issued a report on March 1, 2017, saying that the number of jailed journalist has reached to a new record of 200 with Germany’s Die Welt, Deniz Yücel being among new arrestees.
Of these journalists, 179 are arrested pending trial and without a conviction. Most of the journalists do not even know what the charges are or what evidence, if any, the government has because the indictments were not filed yet.
March 9, 2017
