Fast-tracking for Ahmet Şık, too

KEMAL GÖKTAŞ
 
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has announced that it will prioritise the examination of the application made by our newspaper’s reporter Ahmet Şık, who has been detained due to reports he penned and Tweets he posted. The ECHR stated in April that it would fast-track the application made by Cumhuriyet’s columnists and managers and through an amendment of the Rules of Court enabled the fast-tracking of cases involving detention. In the letter dated 9 June sent by the ECHR’s Registrar to Şık’s lawyer Fikret İlkiz, once information had been imparted about the procedural rules whereby the application would be examined, it was stated with reference to the application for fast-tracking that despite not being included among the criteria in Rule 41 of the Rules of Court the application would be examined as to the merits with priority by the ECHR, and that, ‘The application will be examined as soon as possible.’ The ECHR previously passed a similar decision in applications made on behalf of the journalists detained alongside Cumhuriyet’s columnists and managers, Ahmet Altan, Mehmet Altan, Atilla Taş and Murat Aksoy.
Amended Rules of Court
With controversy raging over the ECHR’s failure to adjudicate the applications despite the passage of five months, in a surprise move, amendment of the ECHR Rules of Court was undertaken at the start of this month. Under the amendment made to the Rules of Court, cases in which the applicant is deprived of liberty as a direct consequence of the alleged violation of his or her rights under the European Convention of Human Rights will be categorised as ‘urgent’. Applications from detained journalists in countries like Turkey, Russia and Azerbaijan have apparently been instrumental in amending the ECHR Rules of Court.
Judicial misconduct
In the application that our reporter Ahmet Şık, who was detained as part of the operation to silence Cumhuriyet, has made to the ECHR challenging the unjust detention order, ‘the passing of a decision for his immediate release’ is sought. In the application, in which it is noted that the grounds cited for Şık’s detention were eight Twitter posts, four news reports and one sentence he was alleged to have spoken at a panel on press freedom, it is said, ‘No act is attributed to the applicant apart from these voicings of thoughts and reports.’ It is stressed that an investigation had previously been launched into one of the reports for which he stands charged and a decision was taken to abandon the proceedings, and, as to the others, proceedings have been brought over them despite the lapse of the four-month time limit for bringing proceedings in the Press Law. With it stated in the application that Şık’s rights to ‘freedom and safety and freedom of speech’ in the European Convention on Human Rights have been violated and there has been a further breach of the Convention’s provision that, ‘The restrictions permitted under this Convention to the said rights and freedoms shall not be applied for any purpose other than those for which they have been prescribed,’ Şık’s immediate release and the awarding of 20,000 euro in damages is sought.