Thirty-seven former district governors who have been in detention at the Ankara Police Department for the past eight days are being tortured and mistreated, according to former Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) deputy Mehmet Ali Aslan.
According to the Bold Medya news website, some of the detainees were released but others are being held blindfolded. The prosecutor reportedly requested the extension of their detention for a third time.
The former district governors were detained on April 7 on charges of links to the Gülen movement, a faith based group inspired by Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen. According to the state-run Anadolu news agency they were accused of using payphones to communicate with the followers of the movement.
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The so-called “payphone investigations” are based on call records. The prosecutors assume that a member of the Gülen movement used the same payphone to call all his contacts consecutively. Based on that assumption, when an alleged member of the movement is found in call records, it is assumed that other numbers called right before or after that call also belong to people with Gülen links. Receiving calls from a payphone periodically is also considered a red flag.
Read more: News About Turkey
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