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The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights today delivered a landmark\u00a0judgment<\/u><\/a>\u00a0in the case of Osman Kavala, the\u00a0human rights defender and civil society leader<\/u><\/a>\u00a0unlawfully imprisoned in T\u00fcrkiye since November 2017. The Court ruled that Kavala\u2019s continued detention is unlawful and found that his rights to fair trial, freedom of expression and association have been violated. The Court also found that his aggravated life sentence amounts to inhuman and degrading treatment and that the Turkish authorities acted in bad faith by keeping him in detention unlawfully. The Court concluded that he was convicted for the ulterior purpose of punishing and silencing him, and to prevent his human rights work. The Court ordered his release at the earliest possible date and that his conviction be quashed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Human rights organisations Human Rights Watch, International Commission of Jurists, and the Turkey Litigation Support Project\u00a0submitted a joint intervention to the Court on the core rights issues at stake in the case. Amnesty International declared Osman Kavala and his six co-defendants prisoners of conscience in June 2022.\u00a0<\/p>\n Today, the ECHR has comprehensively established that Osman Kavala\u2018s detention for is based on a politically motivated trial<\/p>\n Eve Geddie, Amnesty International<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n In what became known as the \u201cGezi Park trial\u201d, Kavala was sentenced on April 25, 2022 to life in prison without parole for \u201cattempting to overthrow the government\u201d alongside co-defendants who received 18-year terms for \u201caiding the attempt to overthrow the government\u201d during protests in 2013. The Turkish authorities should immediately release Osman Kavala and set aside his conviction in line with both T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s international legal obligations and the Turkish Constitution, the groups said.<\/p>\n \u201cToday, in its latest ruling, the European Court of Human Rights has comprehensively established that Osman Kavala\u2018s detention for almost nine years is based on a politically motivated trial,\u201d said Eve Geddie, Director of Amnesty International\u2019s European Institutions Office.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cT\u00fcrkiye has defied two previous binding rulings from the Court in his case. This obstruction of justice must end. T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s authorities, including judicial and prosecutorial, must act to free Osman Kavala immediately and unconditionally.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In its latest judgment, the European Court examined the entirety of the Gezi proceedings \u2013 in which the prosecution falsely alleged that the 2013 peaceful protests in Istanbul\u2019s Gezi Park were an attempt to overthrow the government. The Court assessed the indictment, the charges, the purported evidence, the trial, the appeals and the conviction against the European Convention on Human Rights\u2019 fair trial guarantees. It found that the entire basis of Kavala\u2019s deprivation of liberty and eventual conviction was \u2018a flagrant denial of justice\u2019. The Court also recognized the structural shortcomings which undermine the independence and impartiality of the judiciary in T\u00fcrkiye and ordered measures be taken to remedy them.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEurope\u2019s highest human rights court has confirmed beyond doubt that Kavala\u2019s arrest, detention, prosecution and conviction as part of the Gezi trial was politically motivated and completely flawed from start to finish,\u201d said Ay\u015fe Bing\u00f6l Demir, Director, Turkey Litigation Support Project.<\/p>\n \u201cThe systemic failures that made possible the violations of his rights since his arrest in October 2017 have been exposed once again.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n This is the third time the European Court has ruled on Kavala\u2019s situation. In December 2019, the\u00a0Court found<\/u><\/a>\u00a0that his detention violated his right to liberty and that it pursued the ulterior purpose of silencing him as a human rights defender. The Court ordered his immediate release. In July 2022, in its second ruling on the case, the Court found T\u00fcrkiye in breach of its obligation to abide by the\u00a02019 judgment<\/u><\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The European Convention system for human rights protection now faces a defining test, the groups said. Despite these rulings the Council of Europe has yet to take meaningful action to ensure T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s compliance with the Court\u2019s judgments in the Kavala case.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cT\u00fcrkiye was among the first states to join the Council of Europe and to become party to the European Convention on Human Rights, thereby agreeing to uphold and protect the rights it enshrines and implement the binding judgments of its Court,\u201d said Temur Shakirov, Director of Europe and Central Asia Programme, International Commission of Jurists.<\/p>\n \u201cIt must now honour those obligations, and the Council of Europe needs to act to ensure it does.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The Committee of Ministers (the Council of Europe\u2019s decision-making body) is charged with supervising execution and compliance with the Court judgments. In the face of such serious and continuous lack of compliance, the Council of Europe, its Parliamentary Assembly and Secretary General also need to take every necessary measure and use all the appropriate tools available to secure the implementation of these judgments to ensure that Osman Kavala is finally released from prison. The Council of Europe and its member states should recognize the implications of T\u00fcrkiye\u2019s failure to implement these judgments which represents a serious threat to the effectiveness and credibility of the Convention system.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n T\u00fcrkiye has defied two previous binding rulings from the Court in his case. This obstruction of justice must end<\/p>\n Eve Geddie, Amnesty International<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Council of Europe member states must also keep the Kavala case at the top of their agenda concerning T\u00fcrkiye and raise compliance with these judgments in clear and unambiguous terms with the Turkish authorities, including by articulating concrete demands for Osman Kavala\u2019s immediate release.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201c<\/strong>Osman Kavala has been unlawfully imprisoned for nearly nine years,\u201d said Aisling Reidy, senior legal adviser at Human Rights Watch.<\/p>\n \u201cThe European Court has now demanded his immediate release three times. It is vital that the Council of Europe and its member states act to ensure that the Court\u2019s judgments are respected and that Osman Kavala \u2013 finally \u2013 is freed.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n kabarsula SLOT <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights today delivered a landmark\u00a0judgment\u00a0in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-kabarsula"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kabarsula.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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