Extension of HDP Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş’s detention ordered

Demirtaş, who had not been brought to the hearing auditorium and refused to link up via video, did not attend the hearing. With Demirtaş’s attendance at the next hearing and the extension of his detention ordered, a decision was passed for the hearing to be held on 14.02.2018.
 
The trial has commenced in which his imprisonment for up to 142 years is sought on various charges, chiefly “administering a terrorist organisation”, of HDP Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş, who was detained on 4 November last year. The hearing was transferred from Ankara Judicial Complex to an auditorium in Sincan Prison Complex. From among the more than one thousand people who arrived as potential spectators, 150 people were admitted. Demirtaş did not attend the hearing as he did not wish his defence to be taken via video link. The court dismissed Demirtaş’s application to go to the Constitutional Court on the grounds that, according to Article 148 of the Constitution, lawsuits could not be brought over state of emergency decrees with the force of law. The court, which denied the application for a stay of proceedings at this stage, ordered the extension of Demirtaş’s detention and that he be brought to court in person at the next hearing. The hearing was adjourned until 14 February.

DISPUTE OVER AUDITORIUM 


Demirtaş’s lawyers addressed the court and said that the admission into the courtroom of a small portion of the people who came to monitor the hearing and the non-admission of the foreign delegation was contrary to the principle of public trial. One lawyer also said, “The trial that was until yesterday to be held at the Ankara Judicial Complex is transferred to Sincan Prison at a moment’s notice. Examination of Demirtaş’s situation with regard to his having spent five months in detention is not made despite our applications. When we take stock of all this, we see that the court is acting without seriousness and in bad faith.” To this, the presiding judge retorted, “There is no courtroom in Ankara Judicial Complex having the facility for ten lawyers to sit together. The hearing was transferred to this auditorium under a commission decision in response to your application for the hearing to be transferred to a larger auditorium. Now all lawyers are comfortably seated in their places. There are microphones in front of them. It really hurts me for you to say, in spite of this, that we are in bad faith.”


INVESTIGATION LAUNCHED IN DİYARBAKIR: IMPRISONMENT SOUGHT FOR UP TO 142 YEARS
 
The trial in which Selahattin Demirtaş is detained was filed in Diyarbakır and it was then transferred to Ankara Serious Crime Court No 19 on security grounds. Proceedings were initiated against Demirtaş with his imprisonment for up to 142 years sought on charges of “establishing and administering a terrorist organisation, organisational propaganda and praising crime and criminals”.
 
WHAT CHARGES DOES HE FACE?
 
Over the past year, 33 trials have been filed against HDP Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş. The main trail, which is the reason for his detention and whose first hearing will be held at Ankara Serious Crime Court No 19 on 7 December, encompasses the totality of the 31 case reports previously compiled into him that were sent to Parliament for his immunity to be lifted.
 
Demirtaş’s post on his Twitter account following the court’s ruling: I was detained supposedly for fleeing the so-called judiciary, but the judiciary has fled me for thirteen months.

Following the ruling ordering the extension of HDP Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş’s detention, Demirtaş posted on his official Twitter account, “There used to be a judiciary that was in a pitiful state. Now, even that judiciary is absent. The justice inscription at judicial complexes has well and truly been erased. All that remains is the Palace. I was detained supposedly for fleeing the so-called judiciary, but the judiciary has fled me for thirteen months. Those who are committing these crimes will nevertheless one day give account before the judiciary. Not us, but those who bow doubled-up before the Palace will pass into history in disgrace.”
 
DEMİRTAŞ SUBMITS STATEMENT OF CASE TO COURT

HDP Headquarters drafted a 12-page statement of case to Ankara Serious Crime Court No 19 where Demirtaş is set to be tried today, and indicated in the statement that he wished to attend the hearing in person. Demirtaş made the following applications to the court at the end of his 12-page statement:
 
I apply:
* Attaching priority in the matter of video linking to Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights and not 196/4 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, for the unlawful decision passed to the effect that I attend the hearing via video link pursuant to an abstract statutory article and in an unjustified manner to be retracted and for it to be ruled that I be present at the hearing,
* For space to be allotted for the hundreds of lawyers who are to mount my defence,
* For an auditorium to be supplied taking account of my family and social circle, the press, delegations of domestic and foreign monitors and the monitors to come from HDP Headquarters and provincial and sub-provincial organisations who will be spectators at the hearing,
* For the auditorium to be configured such that I can sit together with and in physical proximity to my lawyers at the hearing,
* As defence will be made at the hearing using means such as laptop computers, overhead projectors, etc., for the auditorium to be fitted with such technical means, and
* As I will participate at the hearing with defence tools consisting of hundreds of files containing thousands of documents, for a table of reasonable size to be placed, such that it stands in front of me, at the place where I will make my defence.