A Turkish court handed prison sentences to 13 journalists from the opposition Cumhuriyet daily on the charge of helping terrorist organizations.
On the day of World Press Freedom Day, 13 journalists received different amounts of sentences in a trial that became an embodiment of suppressing media freedom.
TURKISH JOURNALISTS SENTENCED TODAY
Ahmet Şık, Aydin Engin, Murat Sabuncu: 7 years 6 months
Kadri Gursel: 2 y 6 m
Akın Atalay: 7 y 3 m
Orhan Erinç, Hikmet Çetinkaya: 6 y 3 m
Musa Kart, Güray Öz, Mustafa Kemal Güngör, Hakan Kara, Önder Çelik: 3 y 9 m
Emre İper: 3 y 1 m pic.twitter.com/u9Itp9UVuq— Piotr Zalewski (@p_zalewski) April 25, 2018
Investigative journalist Ahmet Sik was sentenced to 7,6 years in prison while Chairman Akin Atalay received three months lesser sentence.
Most of the journalists were already released pending trial in a case that commanded international attention and prompted calls for dropping charges against Cumhuriyet staff. After 500 days of detention, Chairman Atalay, the last imprisoned defendant, was finally released by a judge in Silivri court in Istanbul on Wednesday.
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