Thus began the official statement that the organization founded by the Italian CNF together with the forensic councils of France and Spain decided to spread after the last repressive action of the Ankara government. “The information available to the OIAD,” the statement reads, “makes it clear that the arrests would be based on suspicions of links between these lawyers and the Fethullah Gulen movement, which the government considers responsible for the coup attempt of the July 2016 ».

But in this regard the OIAD expresses “strong concern” since “after the attempted coup the vast majority of arrests by the Turkish government were arbitrary, in a repressive context conducted against all free and independent voices in the country. Within a few months, “recalls the International Observatory of Attorneys in Danger, “More than 50 thousand people, including numerous magistrates, lawyers, journalists and academics, have been victims of measures of repression”. And, it is also recalled, “the use of torture during detention has been put in place on several occasions”.

“Among the 23 lawyers arrested on June 6,” reads the statement, “there is Taner Kilic, president of the Turkish section of Amnesty international, a figure noted for his work in defense of human rights in the Turkish and international sphere ».

The OIAD therefore expresses “its solidarity with the Turkish lawyers who are victims of repression, and calls on the Turkish authorities to respect the basic principles relating to the role of the legal profession, adopted by the UN in Havana in 1990, and specifically the article 16 which states that “public authorities shall ensure that lawyers: a) can perform all their professional duties without hindrance, intimidation, harassment or undue interference; b) can travel and consult their customers freely in their own country or abroad; c) are not the object, or are threatened or subjected to economic sanctions or other for each action carried out in accordance with their obligations and recognized professional standards and their ethics “. In the absence of evidence of their involvement in the hypothesis of crime “, is the conclusion,