The public prosecutor's office has demanded an acquittal in the trial of German human rights defender Peter Steudtner, accused of terrorist charges in Turkey. The reason is a lack of evidence, it said in the plea of the prosecutor before the Istanbul court.
For the accused in the same procedure honorary chairman of the human rights organization Amnesty International in Turkey, Taner Kilic, he demanded, however, a condemnation for membership in a terrorist organization. It holds up to 15 years in prison.
Amnesty criticized the demand. Steudtner, who had not arrived for the hearing, reacted irritated to the different punitive measures. A verdict is expected on the next court date on February 19th.
The prosecution also proposed an acquittal for Steudtner's Swedish colleague Ali Gharavi and three others of the eleven defendants. Five defendants should be convicted of terrorist support from the perspective of the prosecutor.
Steudtner, Gharavi and eight Turkish human rights activists were arrested in early July 2017 at a workshop on the island of Buyukada off the coast of Istanbul under suspicion of terrorism. At the beginning of the trial in October 2017, everyone was released, while Steudtner and Gharavi left. Kilic, whose case was later added to the indictment, was in remand for more than a year in Izmir, western Turkey.
Steudtner told the German Press Agency that he was "annoyed and shocked by the outcome of today's trial day". Why there are the different penalties, he was incomprehensible. The pleading of the prosecutor is almost a "copy of the original indictment" and thus a "legal nonsense". Discharging evidence, based in part on police investigations, had not been taken into account. Mr Steudtner said he could imagine that the acquittal he proposed would also have to do with the economic and political considerations of the Turkish government.
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Amnesty International's Turkey expert, Andrew Gardner, reacted sharply to the charges against Kilic. "Even for the very low standards of processes that take place in such cases, that was a really unexpected and really bad outcome today," he said. It was as if the last two years of the process had never taken place.
Secretary General of Amnesty Germany, Markus Beeko, called on the Federal Government and other states to immediately call for an acquittal of all human rights defenders.
The case of Steudtner and the imprisonment of other Germans had a heavy burden on Turkish-German relations from 2017 onwards. In the meantime, the relationship had relaxed somewhat after the release of prominent victims. Recently, however, the number of Germans had risen again in conflict with the Turkish judiciary. According to official data from last week, there are currently 60 Germans in Turkish custody. In February, the number was 47.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Berlin, however, no longer publishes publicly how many cases are "political" - which is about terror allegations or presidential defamation.