Footage reveals police beating 2 brothers

İsmail Saymaz ISTANBUL / Radikal

The secret camera footage depicts police beating the two brothers.

Recent secret camera footage from a police station in Istanbul showing police beating two brothers has overshadowed previously released footage depicting the pair fighting back against officers after they allegedly hit the siblings’ mother.

Police stopped the two brothers, Servet and Kemal Karataş, while they were walking to their home in Istanbul’s Yenibosna neighborhood on Aug. 4 for allegedly using drugs.

Kemal Karataş said four police officers attempted to search them and that when his brother refused to take off his trousers in the middle of the street, they made him lie on the ground and cuffed his hands. The pair was subsequently brought to the station in a police car. According to claims, the two were beaten by police officers both in the car and at the station, daily Radikal reported yesterday.
 
The brothers, who are from the southeastern province of Batman, were beaten due to their origin, Kemal Karataş claimed.

Interrogation room

Also, according to the secret camera records from the police station, the brothers were brought to the interrogation room in the station and beaten by a group of police officers there.

When Kemal Karataş was revealed to have meningitis, the police called an ambulance and transferred him to a hospital; however, according to the man’s claims, the police carried on beating him even in the ambulance. Family members of the two brothers soon arrived at the hospital, but they too began quarreling with officers, leading to a fight in which the officers kicked their mother, prompting the brothers to attack the officers.

According to Kemal Karataş, the police continued to beat them in the station’s parking lot until midnight.

Authorities opened two separate cases against the family. The first one was filed at the Bakırköy 3rd Penal Court of First Instance on the grounds that the brothers attacked officers at the hospital; its first hearing was held Nov. 29.

The brothers are also being tried for resisting police; that case’s first hearing was held yesterday at the Bakırköy 8th Penal Court of First Instance.

The officers in question are still under investigation, and no legal proceedings have been opened against them.

After the incident, the family decided to return to Batman, according to reports.

A police commissioner at the station, meanwhile, defended the officers, saying the family had battered four police officers. Camera records from August showing the brothers attacking the police at the hospital had stirred a public debate, prompting an investigation into the pair.