Turkey has charged three journalists, working for Vice News, with "aiding a terrorist organisation".
Jake Hanrahan and cameraman Philip Pendlebury, who are British, and their Iraqi translator and a driver, who wished to be unnamed, were taken into custody on Thursday while working in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir where they were covering clashes between the Turkish army and the Patriotic Revolutionary Youth Movement, the youth wing of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
According to their lawyer, police were tipped off by an anonymous caller, who claimed the journalists were “working with the Islamic State”.
“This is an entirely baseless accusation,” lawyer Ahmet Ay said. “And none of the questions asked during their interrogation at the police station had anything to do with Isis. Nobody asked them about ties to the Islamist group.”
Kevin Sutcliffe, Vice’s head of news programming in Europe, criticised the arrest of the the men.
“Today the Turkish government has levelled baseless and alarmingly false charges of ‘working on behalf of a terrorist organisation’ against three Vice News reporters, in an attempt to intimidate and censor their coverage. Prior to being unjustly detained, these journalists were reporting and documenting the situation in the south-eastern Turkish province of Diyarbakir,
“Vice News condemns in the strongest possible terms the Turkish government’s attempts to silence our reporters who have been providing vital coverage from the region,” he added. “We continue to work with all relevant authorities to expedite the safe release of our three colleagues and friends.”