Main opposition CHP report claims journalist was tortured before detention by police

ANKARA

A report written by a delegation from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) has stated Ömer Çelik, an arrested editor of Diyarbakır-based news agency DİHA, had been tortured by police forces in his house before being detained. 

The report was prepared after CHP deputy chair Veli Ağbaba, Ankara lawmakers Necati Yılmaz and Şenal Sarıhan and Muğla deputy Nurettin Demir visited Çelik on April 28 at Istanbul’s Silivri Prison along with Tunca Öğreten, former editor of Diken news portal, and daily Birgün staff member Mahir Kanaat.

“I compiled emails and reported them as news. I was subjected to torture next to my 35-day-old baby, and was exposed to violence and brutal force,” Çelik, who was detained in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır late in December 2016, was quoted as saying in the CHP’s prison report.

“They [police forces] took me to the balcony and made me stand in a vast bucket filled with cold water. They recorded this torture on camera,” Çelik said. 

A Turkish court on Jan. 18 ordered the arrest of Çelik along with Öğreten and Kanaat on charges of “membership to an armed terror group.” 

“We do not know what our crime is. We have been kept in prison unlawfully for the last 102 days. We have spent 24 days in detention. We are asking for our criminal charges, but they are insistently not preparing and bringing them to us,” Kanaat told the CHP delegate.