Two British VICE News journalists to be deported

ADANA

Two VICE News journalists who were released from prison on Sept. 3 after being arrested in Turkey’s southeast on charges of having links to a terrorist organization will be deported from the country, Doğan News Agency has reported. 

The two British journalists, correspondent Jake Hanrahan and cameraman Philip Pendlebury, reporters for VICE News, were released from the Adana Kürtçüler prison in the southern province of Adana with a Diyarbakır court’s decision on Sept. 3

After being released from prison, the two journalists were first taken to the Adana state hospital’s forensics department for health checks and then to the Provincial Directorate of Migration Management’s Adana branch, which functions under the Interior Ministry. 

The journalists were reported to be deported from the migration management branch, while the journalists’ Turkey-based translator of Iraqi-origin, Muhammed Ismail, continues to be held under arrest on grounds the digital data collected could not be fully investigated, Doğan News Agency reported.  

The three were detained last week in Diyarbakır, the main city of Turkey’s mostly Kurdish southeast, where renewed fighting has killed scores of people.

A court order formally arrested the three late Aug. 30 on charges of aiding a terror organization. All three have rejected the accusation.

Although the Aug. 27 tipoff that led to the Aug. 28 detention of the two journalists claimed they had helped the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the court issued the ruling for their arrest on suspicion they had supported the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the southeastern Mardin, Şırnak and Diyarbakır provinces.

The abbreviations and English translations of organizations linked to the PKK written in a notebook were mentioned in the evidence seized by the police during the journalists’ arrest.

Turkish authorities transferred the arrested journalists to a prison more than 500 kilometers (300 miles) away from their lawyers and the courthouse where they face trial, a lawyer said Sept. 3.

The United States and European Union had both expressed their concern over the arrest, in line with international rights organizations.