The The public prosecutor's version was that he became sick in custody and died on his way to the hospital in November. family was not permitted to open the grave to see the body.* On the other hand, reports of torture are apparently surfacing more frequently in court testimony. We were given recent records from a court trial in Diyarbakir, for example, which contain testimony made in court by prisoners who reported that they were raped anally with truncheons and badly beaten in order to prevent them from testifying in their own defense. The document also indicates that the court accepted this evidence of torture and complied with a demand to inform the Martial Law Command. From this and other reports we heard, it appears that in a number of instances judges have refused to accept confessions or other evidence obtained through torture. In March 1982, responding to an Amnesty International report, the Turkish government acknowledged that there had been 15 deaths from torture since 1980 and asserted that the security officials responsible for the deaths were being punished. In October 1982, however, the Turkish government said that out of 204 prison deaths reported only four were caused by torture. Twenty-five were attributed to natural causes, 15 to suicide, five to escape attempts, and 25 to Hearings, Amnesty, p. 104. killings during clashes. In a statement submitted at the April 1983 Congressional Hearings, Amnesty International reported that it had requested investigations in the cases of 100 people said to have died in custody since the coup, and had received replies from the Turkish government concerning 74 cases. Some replies indicated that the prisoner had in fact died, but according to the government, death was caused by suicide, accident or illness. About a third were said to be under investigation or in a trial stage. In eight cases, the prisoners were still alive. Amnesty does not know whether there were investigations of the remaining inquiries to which it received no reply. Turkish authorities, in at least a handful of known cases, have taken steps to punish torturers. An article in Milliyet of June 25, 1983 cites an Appeals Court ruling that death by torture is premeditated murder, subject to the death penalty. The ruling applied to three security officials convicted of the deaths of three torture victims. It is not clear, however, whether the death penalty was applied. An article in Cumhuriyet of June 15, 1983 reported a decision of "breach of duty" against the Ministry of the Interior in a death-by-torture case. The Ministry was ordered to pay a steep fine to the parents of the dead prisoner. One of the stiffest sentences reported was given to police superintendent Mustafa Haskiris, who was sentenced to a 14-year term by an Ankara military court as punishment for torture. We were told, however, that he was released on bail the day before the sentencing and has since disappeared. Other cases that have been reported show sentences that are generally light in relation to the crime, and a lack of consistency in implementing them. Cumhuriyet reported on January 26, 1982 that police superintendent Enver Gikturk was sentenced to one year in prison for killing a suspect under torture but still keeps his post at police headquarters in Ankara. Eleven police officers accused of killing a political detainee, Ibrahim Eksi, at Ankara police headquarters were acquitted by the military court. According to Cumhuriyet of September 5, 1982, an officer and five soldiers from Mamak Military Prison were tried in September 1982 for beating detainees. The Prosecutor demanded three-month to three-year prison terms. The Manchester Guardian reported on December 8, 1982 that four policemen in the Eastern Turkish city of Erzurum were jailed for three years for using torture to extract confessions.. Le Monde, January 24-25, 1982. ** Info-Turk, February 1982. The most recent statistics we have seen on the Turkish government's attempts to punish torturers come from Assistant Secretary of State Richard Burt in a letter to Helsinki Watch, April 4, 1983: "As of March 16, 1983, the (Turkish) government superintendants, a sergeant, a corporal, and 24 Indications that the Turkish government is making some gestures toward punishing officers involved in torture, usually in extreme cases resulting in a prisoner's death, are encouraging. It has been argued that even a few such gestures will have a sobering effect on would-be torturers. It should certainly make it easier for judges to exclude evidence and confessions from trials when it is shown that they were elicited through torture. An attorney active in the defense of political prisoners told us: "If the judge is the right kind, evidence given under torture will be thrown out." The extent and persistence of torture in Turkish prisons, however, indicates that there is still a long way to go. The government has not confronted the problem of intolerable prison conditions which in themselves are a form 37-536 0-84--7 of torture. Nor does it seem concerned about the greatest problem of all: the fate of the tens of thousands of young people who are still being held. They cannot remain in prison forever. Sooner or later they must be reintegrated peacefully, one would hope. But into Turkish life - continued abuse of a large segment of a generation that has yet to come into its own--and the effect of this abuse on a still larger circle of relatives, friends and sympathizers does not bode well for Turkey's future. |