Prosecutor seeks up to 12 years jail terms for daily Cumhuriyet journalist Oğuz Güven

ISTANBUL

An Istanbul prosecutor demanded up to 12 years of prison time for Oğuz Güven, the chief online editor of daily Cumhuriyet, on terror charges on Oct. 17, four months after the journalist was released from prison after having been arrested on the same charges.

In May, an Istanbul court had ordered Güven’s arrest over a tweet shared on the daily’s Twitter account regarding the death of Denizli Chief Public Prosecutor Mustafa Alper after he was killed in a car accident in the southwestern province of Denizli.

Güven had stated that he did not tweet the report himself, adding that it was “shared completely by mistake” in a bid to break the news urgently.

He also noted that the tweet in question was deleted 55 seconds after it was shared on Cumhuriyet’s official Twitter account and Güven was released on June 14.

In the second hearing of the case at the Istanbul 28th High Criminal Court, prosecutor Orhan Uzan stated that the tweet “exceeded the limits of freedom of thought” and amounted to “terror organization propaganda.”

He added that some social media posts by Güven regarding reports on the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) “exceeded the context of press freedom” and they also included “force and violence.”

Accordingly, the prosecutor demanded prison time for Güven, ranging from two years and nine months to 12 years and nine months on charges of “making terror propaganda by legitimizing and encouraging actions of the armed terror organization.”

The hearing was adjourned to Nov. 21 for Güven’s plea against the indictment.

Alper, 48, and his driver, Muzaffer Akşehirli, were killed on May 10 when a truck laden with debris crashed into their car on a highway. He was the first chief public prosecutor to launch an investigation into the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETÖ) after last year’s coup attempt.