Turkey jails satirical magazine staff over alleged Prophet Muhammad cartoon
Four staff members of the satirical weekly LeMan were arrested and charged with “publicly insulting religious values” amid protests against the image and government crackdown on the magazine’s social media accounts.
Four staff members of the Turkish satirical weekly LeMan were formally charged and jailed, pending trial on Wednesday, for “publicly insulting religious values” over a cartoon that supposedly denigrated the Prophet Muhammad and has drawn the ire of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Cartoonist Dogan Pehlevan, graphic designer Cebrail Okcu, managing director Zafer Aknar and administrative manager Ali Yavuz were detained on Tuesday in a police raid as Islamist protesters gathered outside LeMan’s Istanbul offices, chanting violent slogans and calling for the magazine to be shut down.
The magazine's accounts are also being probed for financial irregularities and to establish whether it receives foreign or domestic financing. Access to LeMan’s social media accounts in Turkey has been blocked.
Arrest warrants are meanwhile pending against the magazine’s founding editor-in-chief, Tuncay Akgun, who is currently in Paris for a family visit, and against its managing editor, Aslan Ozdemir, who is also reportedly in France.
