Horrible hours! The “neglected tambourine” (work battalions) should be blind.
Asenior Turkish intelligence official who campaigned against Turkish government forces to politicize the police force has been severely tortured, according to a new case that has come to light in the neighboring country.
Police Chief Gürsel Aktepe issued a statement before the court, accusing the Erdogan government of politicizing the police force with mass dismissals and reassignments in 2015.
A senior police chief who campaigned on behalf of a police union against turning Turkey’s main law enforcement agency into a political tool in the hands of the authoritarian government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was brutally tortured and later imprisoned.
According to court documents revealed by the Nordic Monitor, Gürsel Aktepe, deputy head of the intelligence unit at the Directorate-General for Security (Emniyet), was tortured and abused for several days and forced to sign a false statement accusing himself of .
At a hearing in Ankara’s 14th High Criminal Court on May 3, 2018, after 22 months in pretrial detention, Aktepe had for the first time the opportunity to reveal the graphic details of his torture by groups ordered to force him to sign a prepared statement in support of the government version of the coup attempt on July 15, 2016.
He was arrested the next day at his home in front of his family.
He was handcuffed and blindfolded and taken to the Ankara police intelligence office.
“The torture, which began with insults and beatings, later became more systematic, such as exposing my naked body to cold water, as well as sexual harassment. I remember being hit on the head several times with a piece of wood.
The contraction of my body, caused by the fact that I did not know when and where they would be beaten, was another form of torture. “I lost consciousness after being hit many times,” he said.
When Aktepe woke up, a new group of torturers was in the room. They put a plastic bag on his head and dragged him to a corner of a room in the basement.
“I had to kneel with my hands behind my back. “Meanwhile, one person tightened the handcuffs, causing the metal clamps to sink into my wrists and cause deep wounds,” he recalls.
“Someone else put a gun to my head and kept threatening to kill me.
He pulled the trigger on his empty gun on my head. “I was repeatedly asked to accept what they said,” he added.
The torture continued for six days, during which he was not provided with food, water or sleep.
The criminals told him that his family would be transferred for torture.
“The torture became so unbearable for me that I could not stand it anymore, so I thought that if they really thought I had anything to do with the coup or any lawlessness, you could put a bullet in my head,” he said.
At one point, they made him have hallucinations and hear strange noises.
He said he lost his free will and had difficulty understanding what was happening.
He told the judges that he would repeat all the statements he made under terrible circumstances.
“None of the names, facts and incidents mentioned in my initial statements are true.
“I ask the court to consider my testimony here and now as the real truth of the matter,” Aktepe said.
The prosecutor wrote in a statement that Gürsel Aktepe, who could not even remember his name after the torture!
Aktepe, a veteran intelligence officer with 24 years of experience in fighting terrorist and criminal networks in Turkey, was targeted by the Erdogan government when he denounced a secret plan to turn the police force into a party “army” group for the ruling Justice and Justice Party. Development Party (AKP) in 2014.
Conducted defense campaigns on behalf of the Union of Defenders of Police. He went public to criticize the government’s massive dismissals by the police force, including many veteran leaders, and spoke to the media and sought to raise awareness of the government’s policies following his dismissal in September 2014. .
Aktepe filed several criminal charges against his tormentors and named officers such as Engin Dinç, then head of the intelligence unit, Erdal Çetinkaya, now head of the cybercrime department, Yilmaz Delen, now head of the Kenas provincial police and retired as those responsible for the torture.
However, Turkish authorities ignored his reports and protected his torturers, who had violated articles of the Turkish Penal Code prohibiting torture and ill-treatment. “I have lost all hope that I will ever leave prison,” he told the panel of judges.
“I still have depressive states when I think about it these days,” he said.
Following the torture at the police intelligence office, Aktepe was taken to prosecutor Alpaslan Karabay on July 20, 2016.
He said he could not stand and could not even remember his name because of the blows to his head.
However, Karabay lists some names and incidents in his statement as if he had made a regular statement.
This falsified statement written by Prosecutor Karabay was included in the indictment as evidence against him.
Despite the lack of evidence, Aktepe was sentenced at the end of the false trial and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
