43-year-old Fabien Azoulay was arrested in Istanbul in 2017, after being delivered to his GBL hotel - a “
recreational
”
drug
used in the evening as a sexual stimulant, and whose sale is authorized in France but formally prohibited. in Turkey.
He was sentenced to twenty years in prison, which has since been reduced to sixteen, and is now incarcerated in a remote prison in the country, 800 km from Istanbul.
"Sofagate": Clément Beaune sees it as a "trap" and an "affront" from Turkey
His relatives and his lawyer alerted him to the conditions of his detention and are now calling on the President of the Republic to obtain his transfer to France.
"
He is totally desperate, he has thought of committing suicide several times and that his life is quite simply in danger in prison
", notably declared Me François Zimeray at the microphone of BFMTV.
One of his friends, instigator of an online petition to alert the French authorities, also affirms that Fabien Azoulay suffered in prison "
abuse, torture and moral harassment
".
Jewish and homosexual, he was allegedly subjected to violence in prison by his fellow inmates for these reasons.
Other relatives cited by BFMTV also mention attempts to forcibly convert him to Islam in prison.
His transfer to another Turkish prison follows an attempt by a fellow inmate to inflict voluntary burns on him.
In a letter to his lawyers, the Frenchman evokes other barbaric facts which would have taken place in the detention center where he is, according to
Le Dauphiné
: “
A guy had his throat slit by a group of four Syrians.
I was asleep when it happened but the screams of the inmates woke me up.
The sight of blood everywhere was scary, worse than in a horror movie.
"
A story which is reminiscent of the plot of the film
Midnight Express
, released in 1978, taken from an autobiographical book of the same name, and which had been denounced at the time by the Turkish authorities.
We follow an American convicted in Turkey for drug trafficking, and who undergoes particularly unworthy conditions of detention.