Vice journalists charged with aiding terrorists
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.”