Eighty university students who are in custody in the Ankara Police Department’s Anti-Terror Branch are being interrogated, under severe threats and torture. Police officers batter female students.
CEVHERİ GÜVEN
Eighty university students are in custody in the Ankara Police Department’s Anti-Terror Branch. Female and male students who were detained during a raid on February 28 have been subjected to interrogation under torture.
The most striking point among the accounts shared by the lawyers and students’ families we have reached is the following statement by the interrogation police to the students: “If only we had killed you on July 15.” On July 15, many of these students born in 1998-2002 were elementary school students.
Female students battered by male police officers
Students have been interrogated without due process; under the pretext of the interview, they have been questioned three times a day, and some of these questioning sessions lasted for hours. In one of these interrogation sessions that lasted until 3:30 am, the female students facing the wall who had been handcuffed behind their backs were beaten by male police officers by being hit on their backs, shoulders, and sides of abdomens.
According to the minutes of the Ankara Bar Association, male students were tortured in the form of being stripped down to their underwear, having to gasp for breath because of the plastic bags placed around their heads, receiving hits on their heads and rough beating.
The majority of student interrogations took place at night, and the interrogators were brought from outside the Ankara Counter-Terrorism Branch.
It has been stated that students’ needs – such as food, toilet, and shower – are met inside their cells, and they are treated by the law while under detention. When they are brought to rooms without security cameras for so-called interviews, however, they face ill-treatment by police officers who do not disclose their identities or their affiliation.
New organization
The accusation against the students is that they are members of the Gulen movement’s new structure.
According to the information shared by the families, however, many of these students’ parents either were listed in the State of Emergency Decrees or arrested following the coup attempt in July 2016. Therefore, state dormitories did not admit these students, forcing them to live together in rented houses.
++Bu çocuklar halen gözaltında olup, bugün gözaltı uzatma için hakim karşısına çıktılar. Hakime durumu izah etmemize rağmen hakim 4 gün daha gözaltı süresini uzattı. Bunun üzerine Ankara Barosu İnsan Hakları Merkezi aracılığıyla durum rapor altına alınması için emniyete gidildi+
— Av. Metin İslam Adem Tok (@avmetintok) March 6, 2020
[Image: Attorney Metin Islam Adem Tok. “These children are still under detention, and they appeared before a judge today for an extension of their detention. Although we explained the circumstances to the judge, the judge still granted a four-day extension of the detention period. Following this, we went to the police so that the Ankara Bar Association’s Human Rights Center could document this situation. The police officers would not let the volunteer attorneys from the Bar Association meet with the victims, which has been recorded in an official report.”]
Raid on February 28
In the raid launched on the morning of February 28, 2020, 63 university students were initially detained by the Anti-Terror Branch of Ankara Police Department. Then the number increased to 80. These students are reportedly born in 1998-2002, with some being at the age of 18.
The sources from the ground indicate that students are quite affected by what they have experienced under detention, facing charges that could be punishable with up to 20 years of imprisonment, and hearing statements like “We should have killed you on July 15.”