Tag Archives: Trial

Turkish journalists go on trial accused of supporting terrorism

Journalists and press freedom activists release balloons during a demonstration in solidarity with the members of the opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet who were accused of supporting a terrorist group outside a courthouse, in Istanbul, Turkey, July 24, 2017.

By Can Sezer

ISTANBUL (Reuters) – Prominent journalists and other staff at a Turkish opposition newspaper went on trial on Monday accused of supporting a terrorist group, in a case that critics of President Tayyip Erdogan consider attack on free speech.

“Journalism is not a crime,” chanted several hundred people gathered outside the central Istanbul court to protest against the prosecution of 17 writers, executives and lawyers of the secularist Cumhuriyet newspaper.

The trial coincides with an escalating dispute with Germany over the arrest in Turkey of 10 rights activists, including one German, as part of a crackdown since last year’s attempted coup against Erdogan.

Turkish prosecutors are seeking up to 43 years in jail for newspaper staff accused of targeting Erdogan through “asymmetric war methods”.

“I am not here because I knowingly and willingly helped a terrorist organisation, but because I am an independent, questioning and critical journalist,” one of the defendants, columnist Kadri Gursel, told the court.

Gursel, who, along with editor Murat Sabuncu and other senior staff, has been in pre-trial detention for 267 days, was prevented from hugging his son in the courtroom by security guards, the newspaper said on its website.

The 324-page indictment alleges Cumhuriyet was effectively taken over by the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, blamed for the failed putsch last July, and used to “veil the actions of terrorist groups”.

Gulen has denied any involvement in the coup.

The newspaper is also accused of writing stories that serve “separatist manipulation”.

Other defendants include Ahmet Sik, who once wrote a book critical of Gulen’s movement. Former editor Can Dundar, who is living in Germany, is being tried in absentia.

The newspaper has called the charges “imaginary accusations and slander”. Social media posts comprised the bulk of evidence in the indictment, along with allegations that staff had been in contact with users of Bylock, an encrypted messaging app the government says was used by Gulen’s followers.

 

‘DE FACTO COALITION’

“According to the government, everyone in opposition is a terrorist, the only non-terrorists are themselves,” Filiz Kerestecioglu, a member of parliament from the pro-Kurdish HDP opposition party, told reporters ahead of the trial.

Gursel, the columnist, denied he had links to Gulen’s movement, saying he had in the past revealed ties between Erdogan’s AK Party and the Gulen movement.

Erdogan has his roots in political Islam and was an ally of the cleric until a public falling-out in 2013.

“I exposed the current government’s de facto coalition with this group and I foresaw the harm that this sinister cooperation would do to the country,” he told the court.

Rights groups and Turkey’s Western allies have complained of deteriorating human rights under Erdogan. In the crackdown since last July’s failed coup, 50,000 people have been jailed pending trial and some 150,000 detained or dismissed from their jobs.

As part of the purge some 150 media outlets have been shut down and around 160 journalists are in jail, according to the Turkish Journalists’ Association.

The crackdown has strained Turkey’s ties with the European Union, but reaction from the bloc has been restrained because it depends on Turkey to curb the flow of migrants into Europe.

Europe’s leading power, Germany, has stepped up pressure in recent days, threatening measures that could hinder German investment in Turkey and reviewing Turkish applications for arms deals.

Turkish authorities say the crackdown is justified by the gravity of the coup attempt, in which rogue soldiers tried to overthrow the government and Erdogan, killing 250 people, most of them civilians.

 

(Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

 

‘I had to do it,’ accused gunman Dylann Roof says of SC church attack

Emanuel African Methodist Church

By Harriet McLeod

CHARLESTON, S.C. (Reuters) – Jurors in the federal hate crimes trial of Dylann Roof watched a video on Friday of the avowed white supremacist confessing to killing nine parishioners at a historic black church in South Carolina and saying he felt he “had to do it.”

Roof told investigators after his arrest for the June 17, 2015, massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston that he estimated he had killed five people as retribution for perceived racial grievances. He sounded surprised to learn nine parishioners died.

“I had to do it because somebody had to do it,” Roof said in the taped confession.

Asked if he had regrets, Roof said, “I’d say so, yes … I regret that I did it, a little bit.”
Roof’s lawyers have not disputed his guilt but hope to spare him from being executed on charges of hate crimes resulting in death, obstruction of religion and firearms violations.

Roof, 22, also faces a death sentence if found guilty of murder charges in state court.

Police lead suspected shooter Dylann Roof into the courthouse in Shelby, North Carolina,

Police lead suspected shooter Dylann Roof into the courthouse in Shelby, North Carolina, U.S., June 18, 2015. REUTERS/Jason Miczek/File Photo

The videotaped confession, presented on the third day of his federal trial in Charleston, gave jurors a chance to hear the defendant explain why he carried out the attack on a Bible study meeting.

He appeared both animated and at ease as he spoke to investigators, laughing at times as he answered their questions.

Roof spoke with investigators in Shelby, North Carolina, where he was arrested about 13 hours after security video showed him leaving the church.

Inside his car, police said they found a journal where Roof wrote of his dreams for a race war and notes he wrote to his parents.

“Dear Mom, I love you,” read one note presented to jurors. “I’m sorry for what I did. I know this will have repercussions.”

In the video, Roof said white people needed to take a stand against crimes by African Americans.

“I don’t like what black people do,” Roof said, adding he was in favor of reinstating segregation.

He chose the Charleston church for the shooting because he knew “at least a small amount of black people” would be gathered there. Two adults and a child at the Bible study survived.

“It’s like this,” Roof said. “I’m not in a position, by myself, to go into a black neighborhood and shoot drug dealers.”

Nobody ran when he opened fire, he said, and he recalled pausing between shots.

“I was thinking about what I should do,” he said.

(Reporting by Harriet McLeod; Writing by Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Bill Trott and Andrew Hay)

Bosnian Serb leader blames Muslims for ‘preparing for war’

A woman walks past graffiti of Bosnian Serb wartime general Ratko Mladic in a suburb of Belgrade, Serbia,

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – Ratko Mladic’s lawyers told judges on Friday that Bosnia’s “fanatical” Muslim leaders had been preparing “jihad” long before the Bosnian Serb general, on trial in The Hague for genocide, ever set foot in the country in uniform.

Mladic, 74, once an officer in the federal Yugoslav army, led Bosnian Serb forces in a three-year campaign to carve an ethnically pure Serb state out of Bosnia. The campaign reached its nadir with the slaughter of thousands of Muslims in Srebrenica.

Summing up at the end of Mladic’s four-year trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, defense lawyer Branko Lukic said Mladic had been defending his country and its people from “ethnic and religious fanaticism.”

“The Bosnian Muslim Party of Democratic Action (SDA) was preparing for war,” Lukic said.

He quoted from an “Islamic declaration” by Bosnia’s wartime leader, Alija Izetbegovic, which stated that “there can be no peace between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic social and political institutions”.

Prosecutors on Wednesday demanded life imprisonment for Mladic for leading Bosnian Serb forces as they encircled the U.N.-designated safe haven of Srebrenica and then murdered some 8,000 of its male Muslim inhabitants, burying them in mass graves.

Former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic (rear) attends his trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague

Former Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic (rear) attends his trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at The Hague May 16, 2012. REUTERS/Toussaint Kluiters/File photo

But Lukic told the court that all parties, not only the Bosnian Serbs, were responsible for the violence in Bosnia — not least Arab “mujahideen” fighters who had come to fight alongside their Bosnian co-religionists.

“To believe the prosecution’s vision of the case, one has to ignore the presence and activities of an opposing armed opponent,” he said, as Mladic, described by another defense lawyer as a popular “soldier’s soldier”, listened from the dock.

“Mladic is here today because he is a Serb and dared to stand up against Alija Izetbegovic’s jihad,” or Islamic holy war, asserting the Bosnian Muslim leader had enjoyed the covert backing of NATO and Western powers.

The Srebrenica massacre, Europe’s worst since World War Two, triggered NATO air strikes that ultimately ended the three-year Bosnian war, part of the break-up of Yugoslavia in a series of wars that killed 130,000 people and lasted for most of the 1990s [nL5N1E2450].

Mladic is charged with two counts of genocide in connection with the war. His old ally, the Bosnian Serbs’ political leader Radovan Karadzic, was convicted of a single count of genocide this year and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

A verdict and, in the event of a conviction, a sentence are expected next year.

(Reporting By Thomas Escritt; Editing by Larry King)

UK lawmaker killed for ‘ideological cause’ on EU membership

Tributes in memory of murdered Labour Party MP Jo Cox, who was shot dead in Birstall, are left at Parliament Square in London, Britain June 18, 2016.

By Michael Holden

LONDON (Reuters) – British lawmaker Jo Cox, who was killed in the street shortly before the June 23 referendum on EU membership, died in a pre-meditated murder carried out for a political or ideological cause, jurors were told on Monday.

As the prosecution opened its case against Thomas Mair, 53, who is charged with Cox’s murder, the jury at London’s Old Bailey court were told witnesses had heard Mair repeatedly say “Britain First” during the attack.

Cox, a 41-year-old mother of two young children, was shot and repeatedly stabbed as she arrived for an advice session with constituents in the town of Birstall, part of her electoral district in northern England.

The murder of Cox, a former aid worker who had been an ardent supporter of staying in the EU, shocked Britain and led to the suspension for several days of referendum campaigning which had been growing increasingly bitter.

Mair is also charged with causing grievous bodily harm to 77-year-old Bernard Carter-Kenny, who tried to help Cox during the attack, and possession of a firearm and a dagger.

Prosecutor Richard Whittam told the jury Cox was shot three times and suffered multiple stab wounds.

“During the course of the murder, Thomas Mair was heard by a number of witnesses to say repeatedly: ‘Britain First’,” Whittam said.

“Thomas Mair’s intention was to kill her in what was a planned and pre-meditated murder for a political and/or ideological cause.”

“DEATH TO TRAITORS”

Carter-Kenny risked his own life and was stabbed with the same knife Mair used on Cox, Whittam added.

Earlier on Monday, with Cox’s mother, father and sister in court watching, eight men and four women were sworn in as jurors to hear the case which the judge Alan Wilkie said had attracted and would continue to attract considerable attention.

Mair, balding with a gray goatee beard and wearing a dark blue suit and black tie, sat silently in the dock flanked by three security guards.

At a hearing in October, he declined to respond when asked if he was guilty so the judge recorded not guilty pleas.

At the first court hearing following his arrest, Mair had said his name was “death to traitors, freedom for Britain” and the case, due to last two weeks, is being treated as a terrorism matter.

His lawyer has also previously told London’s Old Bailey central criminal court where the trial is being held that medical issues would not feature in the defense argument.

Cox’s murder briefly united politicians divided over the EU question and also led to questions about the security of lawmakers in their constituencies.

“As the trial starts I’d encourage everyone to remember Jo’s life and what she stood for, not the manner of her death,” her husband Brendan wrote on Twitter on Saturday.

The last British Member of Parliament to have been killed before Cox was Ian Gow, who died after an Irish Republican Army (IRA) bomb exploded under his car at his home in 1990.

(Reporting by Michael Holden; editing by Stephen Addison and Estelle Shirbon)

Trial begins of Islamic State suspects in Turkey’s worst suicide bombing

Carnations are seen placed on the ground during a protest against explosions at a peace march in Ankara, in central Istanbul, Turkey,

By Ece Toksabay

ANKARA (Reuters) – More than a dozen suspected members of Islamic State appeared under police protection in an Ankara courtroom on Monday accused of involvement in Turkey’s deadliest suicide bombing, which killed more than 100 people in the capital just over a year ago.

The defendants were brought into the courtroom under the protection of riot police in body armor and helmets, as families and lawyers of the victims chanted “murderers” and demanded the state also accept responsibility.

“If the security measures used to protect the killers today were taken during the rally, the Ankara train station massacre wouldn’t have taken place,” said Mahmut Tanal, a member of parliament for main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).

The defendants were among 36 suspects, some still at large, on trial for plotting the double suicide bombing outside the main train station in Ankara on Oct. 10, 2015, which killed mainly young pro-Kurdish and left-wing activists at a rally.

The 35 Turks and one Kazakh face charges of murder, membership of a terrorist organization and seeking to change the constitutional order, according to the indictment. Some face multiple sentences of up to 11,750 years in prison.

The twin suicide bombing took place in NATO member Turkey 20 days before a fiercely contested general election, raising tensions between the authorities and opposition supporters among the Kurdish community, Turkey’s largest minority.

“A comprehensive and effective investigation has not been carried out into the bombing. No state officials are accused of neglect in the indictment. How can we expect justice from such a trial?” lawyer Mehtap Sakinci Cosgun, whose husband was killed in the bombing, told Reuters outside the courtroom.

Turkish forces have been combating an armed campaign by Kurdish militants while Kurdish political organizations have also been the subject of arrests over the last week.

One of the suicide bombers was identified as Turkish citizen Yunus Emre Alagoz and the other as a Syrian citizen who has yet to be identified, according to the indictment seen by Reuters.

Three of the suspects on trial on Monday appeared by video link from the southern city of Gaziantep near the Syrian border, where the Islamic State cell responsible for the attack is thought to have been based.

Islamic State has grown increasingly active in Turkey. A gun-and-bomb attack blamed on the group at Istanbul’s main airport in June killed 47 people, while the bombing of a Kurdish wedding in Gaziantep in August killed 57.

Turkey launched a military incursion into Syria shortly after the wedding attack in a bid to push the radical jihadist group away from its border and prevent Kurdish militia fighters from gaining ground in their wake.

(Reporting by Ece Toksabay; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Ralph Boulton)

Baltimore police officer acquitted in Freddie Gray death

Officer Edward M. Nero is pictured in this undated booking photo provided by the Baltimore Police Department

By Donna Owens

BALTIMORE (Reuters) – Baltimore police officer Edward Nero was acquitted on Monday of four charges in the 2015 death of black detainee Freddie Gray, the second setback for prosecutors in a case that triggered rioting and fueled the Black Lives Matter movement.

Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Barry Williams, who heard the case in a bench trial, told a packed courtroom that Nero, 30, had acted as any officer would during Gray’s arrest in April 2015.

Nero is the second officer to be tried and faced misdemeanor charges of second-degree assault, reckless endangerment and two counts of misconduct in office. The first trial of an officer in the 25-year-old Gray’s death ended in a mistrial.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake issued a statement urging calm. The only incident in the immediate aftermath of the verdict involved protesters chasing members of Nero’s family into a parking garage, yelling, “No justice, no peace.”

State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby had charged Nero with arresting Gray without probable cause when he ran from him and other officers unprovoked in a high-crime area. She also contended Nero did not secure Gray in a police transport van. Gray died from a spine injury suffered in the van.

Nero’s lawyers had argued that Gray’s arrest was justified and that the officer had little to do with it. He never touched Gray except when he tried to help him find an asthma inhaler and helped lift him into the van, they said.

During a 25-minute reading of his decision, Williams said Nero acted as a “similarly situated” officer would and that prosecutors had failed to prove their case. He said Nero’s partner, Garrett Miller, had testified that Nero had done little during the arrest.

“Miller stated unequivocally that he was the one who detained and handcuffed Mr. Gray,” he said.

Nero still faces an internal department investigation. There was no response from Mosby’s office since those involved in the case are under a court gag order.

In a statement, defense attorney Marc Zayon said Nero appreciated “the reasoned judgment” of Williams in his verdict and called on Mosby to dismiss charges against the five other officers accused in the case.

Gray’s death a week after his arrest had sparked a day of rioting in which nearly 400 buildings were damaged or destroyed in the majority black city of 620,000 people. The case helped stoke the Black Lives Matter movement and national debate over policing in minority communities.

Baltimore paid Gray’s family $6.4 million in a settlement reached last year.

William Porter was the first officer tried in the case and his trial ended in a hung jury in December. The charges against other officers range from misconduct to second-degree murder.

The hashtag #FreddieGray began trending on Twitter after news of Nero’s acquittal. Some black activists expressed their disappointment.

“#FreddieGray should be alive today,” wrote DeRay Mckesson, a key figure in the Black Lives Matter movement who unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Baltimore in April.

Tim Maloney, a Greenbelt, Maryland, lawyer who has handled police misconduct cases, said if prosecutors had been successful, any officer who made an arrest without clear probable cause would be subject to criminal prosecution.

“That would have an incredible chilling effect,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Marcus Howard and Amy Tennery in New York; Writing by Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Alan Crosby and Bill Trott)

Former Auschwitz guard apologizes at trial; says it was ‘nightmare’

Defendant Hanning, a 94-year-old former guard at Auschwitz death camp, arrives for the continuation of his trial in Detmold

By Elke Ahlswede

DETMOLD, Germany (Reuters) – A 94-year-old former Auschwitz guard on trial in Germany apologized in court to victims on Friday, telling them he regretted being part of a “criminal organization” that had killed so many people and caused such suffering.

“I’m ashamed that I knowingly let injustice happen and did nothing to oppose it”, said Reinhold Hanning, a former Nazi SS officer, seated in a wheelchair in the court in Detmold.

Hanning is charged with being an accessory to the murder of at least 170,000 people.

Holocaust survivors, who detailed their horrific experiences at the trial which opened in February, have pleaded with the accused to break his silence in what could be one of the last Holocaust court cases in Germany.

Hanning finally broke the silence he kept over the course of 12 hearings, each limited to two hours due to his old age.

Reading in a firm voice from a paper he took out of his gray suit pocket, he said: “I want to tell you that I deeply regret having been part of a criminal organization that is responsible for the death of many innocent people, for the destruction of countless families, for misery, torment and suffering on the side of the victims and their relatives”.

“I have remained silent for a long time, I have remained silent all of my life,” he added.

Just before, his lawyer, Johannes Salmen, had given a detailed account of the defendant’s view of his life and particularly his time in Auschwitz.

In this 22-page long declaration, Hanning admitted having known about mass murder in the death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.

“I’ve tried to repress this period for my whole life. Auschwitz was a nightmare, I wish I had never been there,” the lawyer cited Hanning as saying.

The accused was sent there after being wounded in battle and his request to rejoin his comrades on the front had been rejected twice, he said.

“I accept his apology but I can’t forgive him,” said Leon Schwarzbaum, a 95-year-old Holocaust survivor and co-plaintiff.

She said Hanning should have recounted everything that happened in Auschwitz and “what he took part in”.

Although Hanning is not charged with having been directly involved in any killings at the camp, prosecutors accuse him of facilitating the slaughter in his capacity as a guard at the camp where 1.2 million people, most of them Jews, were killed.

A precedent for such charges was set in 2011, when death camp guard Ivan Demjanjuk was convicted.

Accused by the prosecutor’s office in Dortmund as well as by 40 joint plaintiffs from Hungary, Israel, Canada, Britain, the United States and Germany, Hanning is said to have joined the SS forces voluntarily at the age of 18 in 1940.

Hanning on Friday said however that his stepmother, a member of the Nazi-party, urged him to join.

A verdict is expected on May 27.

Germany is holding what are likely to be its last trials linked to the Holocaust, in which more than six million people, mostly Jews, were killed by the Nazis.

In addition to Hanning, one other man and one woman in their 90s are accused of being accessories to the murder of hundreds of thousands of people at Auschwitz.

A third man who was a member of the Nazi SS guard team at Auschwitz died at the age of 93 this month, days before his trial was due to start.

(Writing by Elke Ahlswede and Joseph Nasr; Editing by Angus MacSwan)

Archaeologists Believe Site Of Jesus’ Trial Found

A team of Israeli archaeologists believes they have found the place where Jesus was placed on trial.

After 15 years of excavation in Jerusalem, the team found the location under an abandoned building next to the Tower of David museum.  The building, which once served as a prison during Turkish and British rule, was believed to be built over a palace when excavation was proposed almost two decades ago.

The scientists now say the palace is King Herod’s palace is located under the building.

Luke 23 states that Jesus was sent to Herod after Pilate discovered he came from Galilee.

“And as soon as he knew that he belonged unto Herod’s jurisdiction, he sent him to Herod, who himself also was at Jerusalem at that time,” it reads. “And when Herod saw Jesus, he was exceeding glad, for he was desirous to see Him of a long season, because he had heard many things of Him; and he hoped to have seen some miracle done by Him. Then he questioned with Him in many words; but He answered him nothing.”

The archaeologists say the discovery lines up with Scripture.

“There is, of course, no inscription stating it happened here, but everything—archaeological, historical and gospel accounts—all falls into place and makes sense,” Shimon Gibson, an archaeology professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, told the Washington Post.

Morsi Defiant As Trial Opens

Deposed Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi appeared at a trial yesterday defiant and angry at the court.

The court had installed a soundproof cage for Morsi to stay inside during the hearing in response to the first time Morsi appeared in court and disrupted the proceedings by continually yelling at the judge and prosecutors.

The new soundproof cage was so successful at keeping order in the court that Egyptian state television declared it “the hero of today’s trial.”

Morsi was also ordered to wear regular prison apparel instead of the dark suit that he wore in the first trial.

Morsi reportedly sat angrily in his cube until his microphone was turned on and then he did nothing but question the judge.

“I am the president of this republic,” Morsi said, “and I’ve been here since 7 in the morning sitting in this dump.”

Other members of the Brotherhood on trial at the same time were placed in a separate glass cage.  Every time their microphones were turned on, all  they did was chant anti-military messages.

Morsi Trial Begins Amid Disruption

The trial of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi began in Egypt with court disruptions, tension and a defiant defendant.

Morsi and 14 senior members of the outlawed Islamist Muslim Brotherhood were brought into the court to be formally charged with incitement of violence and murder. All defendants are facing the death penalty.

Morsi defied the judge by wearing a blue suit into court instead of the mandated prison clothes. He also challenged the court’s authority saying that he was the legitimate president of the country and those who removed him should be the ones on trial.

Presiding judge Ahmed Sabry Youssef adjourned the hearing because the defendants refused to stop chanting. He gave the defense lawyers until January 8th to review documents from the case.

The hearing was the first public appearance of Morsi since his removal from power on July 3rd.