Six days after disappearance, Turkish worker returns home
Following a public outcry, Turkish electrician Gokhan Gunes returned to his family Tuesday after six days of alleged torture.
ISTANBUL — Six days after he went missing, a Turkish worker returned to his family Tuesday morning claiming he had been abducted and tortured by unidentified state agents in a forced disappearance.
Speaking with a bruise under his left eye, Gokhan Gunes, an electrician of Alevi descent with leftist political leanings, described the six days he was missing during a press conference at the Istanbul branch of Turkey’s Human Rights Association Tuesday.
“To make me submit, they gave me an electric shock,” Gunes said. “When I woke up again, my head was covered in a black bag. … I was taken into a building, given more electric shocks and beaten.”
He added he was doused in cold water and held in a place called “the grave” by men who called themselves “the invisibles.” Gunes claimed his abductors were trying to recruit him as an informant on the Socialist Party of the Oppressed, a Marxist group allied with the pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party.
