Note:My client, Mr. Salih Mirzabeyoglu, who is one of the prominent Islamist thinkers and writers in Turkey, was arrested with the claim that he is the leader of the illegal IBDA-C organization, and put in Metris Prison in Istanbul. Then he was transferred to the Kartal Special-Type Prison by force with his hands handcuffed and put in a one-person cell. Here, while he was being kept under extremely strict isolation, he attempted committing suicide on July 26, 2000 He was been under therapy in Bakirköy Mental Hospital.

AN EXPLANATION CONCERNED WITH SALIH MIRZABEYOGLU

The government took our client both physically and mentally healthy 1.5 years ago.

Our client is in a situation today that he has almost lost his physical and mental health.

This distressing event occurred in a stage just we were about to convince both himself and the Justice Ministry to cure him.(We had visited Mr. H. Poyrazoglu the Kartal Chief Public Prosecutor on Friday and he decided to send our petition asking Mr. Mirzabeyoglu’s medical treatment to the Ministry with the sign of an “Approved”.)

We visited our client at present today. In addition, we had also an interview with Prison Administration since the situation was strained in the prison to prevent the indignation we had to explain that such an event had not occurred and he was injured as a result of falling down from a chair.

But to make this explanation became a necessity after the Gendarmerie had given the suicide report secretly to the newspapers in a way that we could not understand well.

Our client’s attempt for suicide is correct.

As much as we understand there are two main reason for this:

1)During the Metris Prison Operation our client was heavily tortured after he had been captured and he had been handcuffed behind the back. Our client has the influences of this physical and moral torment.

2)Kartal Special Type Prison is being used as a laboratory for cell-type prisons and insensitive isolation policy is being applied. Our client has lived lonely and having bad health in a one-person cell for 5 months and he was permitted to meet with his lawyers and his relatives half an hour in a week.

Unfortunately, we could not obtain a result from our attempts for his therapy or at least putting another person by him because of strict attitude of the Justice Minister.

Our client would not be alive today if the chief public prosecutor had not sent another arrested to his cell by using his personal authority upon the scene to have been serious. Now everything has finished.

At this moment, the duty of the Justice Ministry at least to give the necessary importance during his therapy. To protect the health of a person who is arrested soundly is the duty of this Ministry.

At this point, I must emphasise that nine of our ten clients who is under this tough isolation manner have become in need of physical and psychological therapy.

“CELL IS DEATH” says Human Rights Association. Our observations verify this. The people who are under arrest or who are convicts go to the point of suicide or going mad.

We hope that this unpleasant event that happened to our client enhances the public sensibility and causes the Minister of Justice to give up his wrong insist and obstinacy about “cell-type” prisons.

Best wishes,

Harun Yuksel-Hasan Ölçer

Attorney Lawyers of Salih Mirzabeyoglu

Announcement to the Press About Salih Mirzabeyoglu

Note: The following is the text read by the Attorney Lawyers of Salih Mirzabeyoglu in the Press Meeting arranged by the Istanbul Branch of IHD (The Human Rights Association) on June 30, 2000.

yukselharun@superonline.com

Dear Members of Press,

Our client , Salih Mirzabeyoglu, who has been judged as arrested with the claim that he is the leader of the illegal IBDA-C (Islamic Great Eastern Raiders / Front) organization, attempted committing suicide on June 25,2000 in his cell in the Kartal Special Type(Cell-Type) Prison, where he had been living ALONE for 5 months.

He was saved by another arrested, Fazil Arslanturk, who was given by him in the last month, June 23, only two days before the event.

Very shortly, this is the story of the event. Since nobody wants to kill himself without any reason, what is there behind this event? Today, here we are going to share, with you, some of what we saw and we know about the background of this event.

We are lawsmen. The law looks for concrete definite evidence in order to give a decision about a case.

Therefore, we prefer keeping silent for now about the points which we know but about which we could not find evidence yet.

With this reason, we said in the explanation we made in the first day the following about the event:

In our opinion, there are two main reasons of this:

1)During the Metris Prison Operation our client was heavily tortured after he had been captured and handcuffed behind the back. Our client has the influences of this physical and moral torment.

2)Kartal Special Type Prison is being used as a laboratory for cell-type prisons and a very strict isolation policy is being applied. Our client has lived alone having bad health in a one-person cell for 5 months and he was permitted to meet with his lawyers and his relatives for only half an hour a week.

Unfortunately, we could not obtain a result from our attempts for his therapy or at least putting another person by him because of strict attitude of the Justice Minister.

Our client would not be alive today if the Chief Public Prosecutor had not sent another arrested to his cell by using his personal authority upon the scene to have been serious.

These are the two concrete reasons that can be seen clearly and immediately. But they are definitely not enough to explain why a person such as our client, who is physically and psychologically strong enough, attempted to commit suicide.

Because this event did not happen instantaneously and as a result of sudden decision.

We have started observing some uneasiness in him since the beginning of March and tried to search and find the reasons of it. He was talking about hearing some human voices disturbing him for 24 hours, and he was trying to find the reasons.

The first thing he thought of was the possibility that they might have added to his food some drugs or chemical things that cause hallucination. It was proved that Adnan Oktar was given cocaine when he was under observation in the Police Station.(Adnan Oktar is an Islamic writer. He is in Kartal Prison, too. His case is still in court. He was arrested about 2 years ago, too)

We would not ignore such a possibility because even the international reports write about claims that some people are given such drugs during questioning under observation in the Police Stations.

We started searching this, we asked a specialist doctor from the Turkish Doctors Association Human Rights Commission, and we learned that such drugs and chemical things causing these kinds of effects exist.

We asked this doctor if it is possible to give these drugs to the person by mixing them with his food.

He said, “Yes, it is possible.”

Our third question was that if there had been such a situation could this be determined by medical analysis. The answer was “This could be determined by blood, urine, hair analysis. It is not possible to make a private blood, urine and hair analysis under the prison conditions. Only the hair analysis can be make in these conditions.

We also asked the same medical doctors whether there is a medical laboratory that could make such an analysis in Turkey or not. The doctor said that such analysis could be made in Medical Jurisprudence Institution or Capa Medical Faculty by following formal procedure but this could not be made personally and privately. We did not have a complete evidence to make formal application. Even if we had had the evidence, we could not be sure about the result of the analysis.

We started looking for a laboratory abroad that could make such an analysis. But in this while the health of our client was becoming bad day by day. We tried to convince him for therapy. But he was in a belief that his uneasiness sourced from not himself but from some reasons out of himself.

Another possibility our client believed was that deliberitely a part of the sounds could be produced by some electronic apparatus. At the end of our research we learned that this could be possible, too.

Meanwhile a strange event that strengthened our doubth, happened. The Gendermarie came to the one-person cell of our client and that of Ali Osman Zor with drills. They said that they would make a search in the cell and removed our client and Ali Osman Zor from their cells. They drilled the walls of the cells and then leaded the holes with plaster. This application was made only in our client’s and Ali Osman Zor’s cells.

Our clients got suspicious that some kinds of electronic devices were placed in the wall or removed from there in this operation because they only searched these two cells in the prison. One and a half months ago he was convinced for therapy. But he knew that in going to hospital and returning to the prison a lot of scrambles would be lived because of security reasons and he didn’t want these.

When we said to him if the public prosecutorship had permitted, we could have brought a specialist doctor and he agreed this. Then, Hasan Olcer, one of his lawyers, made an interview with the Kartal Chief Public Prosecutor Mr. Huseyin Poyrazoglu and asked him whether such a permission could be given.

The Prosecutor said that he had to learn this from the Justice Ministry and then he would behave accourding to the reply of the Ministry. We were able to see our client for a period of 30-40 minutes in a week. At the end, he accepted the diagnosis and therapy. But his health became worse and his dialogue with us came to a breaking point. Because he didn’t eat anything, he also became worn out physically.

The Prison Administration said to Lawyer Ahmet Arslan that our client’s situation was critical and Kartal Chief Prosecutor wanted to meet us on June 23th. We made an interview with the Prosecutor at the evening of that day. Because it was almost evening and the coming days were the weekend, we decided to give a petition to him on Monday asking his medical treatment by a specialist doctor whom we were going to bring from out of the prison. And he was going to fax this petition to the Ministry with the sign of “Approved”. But unfortunately this distressing event happened on Sunday evening.

As we mentioned in our first explanation, if the Chief Prosecutor had not put another arrested into his cell by using his personal authority, our client would not be alive today.

Dear Press Members,

Our client is now entrusted to the doctors’ safekeeping. We believe that they will take pains to cure him.

We continue to research the reasons of my client’s attempt for suicide. By applying to the Pendik Prosecutory yesterday, we wanted the necessary analysis to be made for determining whether the drugs that destruct the mental faculty were given to him.

By this event, we announce that, based on our observations in Kartal Prison, which is the first example of cell-type prisons denying the human nature and its social side, isolation in the cells is equivalent to burying a person alive and prisoning people in such places brings them to the point of going mad or trying one of the ways of committing suicide. We also announce that we support the attempts and the actions of NGOs(Non- government Organizations) such as IHD(Human Rights Association), Istanbul Bar and professional organizations, which resist this type of prisons.

We also thank the Istanbul Branch of the Human Rights Association and its Director for giving us this oppurtunity.

Thank you all.

30.06.2000

Harun Yuksel-Guven Yilmaz-Ahmet Arslan

Attorney Lawyers of Salih Mirzabeyoglu