Prominent Turkish lawyer defiant after jail sentence over media trial - Al-Monitor: The Middle Eastʼs leading independent news source since 2012

Diego Cupolo

Diego Cupolo

Feb 17, 2021

Eren Keskin (C), the director of Turkish newspaper Ozgur Gundem, speaks to the press as Kurdish women hold pictures of jailed journalists in Istanbul on Sept. 10, 2012, during the start of the trial of 44 journalists with suspected links to rebels from the Kurdistan Workers Party, in the latest of a series of legal operations against the Kurdish militants. Some 44 suspects, 36 of them arrested pending trial, are currently facing charges in the 800-page indictment that was unanimously accepted by the court in May 2012. The suspects are charged with leading a terrorist organization, being a member of a terrorist organization and being a member of the press committee of a terrorist organization. — BULENT KILIC/AFP/GettyImages

ISTANBUL — More than four years after the state-ordered shuttering of the pro-Kurdish newspaper Ozgur Gundem, a Turkish court issued jail sentences Monday to four of its administrators on terror-related charges.

Among the convicted was Eren Keskin, a prominent human rights lawyer and co-chair of Turkey’s Human Rights Association, who served as a temporary guest editor when the newspaper was facing increasing legal pressure in 2016.

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