07/02/2025 | Writer: Kaos GL
The fourth hearing of the retrial of Pınar Selek, whose acquittal was overturned in 2022, was held today. The court decided to continue the arrest and detention order against Selek.
The fourth hearing of the retrial of Pınar Selek, who was acquitted four times in the Spice Bazaar case and whose acquittals were overturned in June 2022, was held today at Istanbul 15th High Criminal Court.
The court decided to continue the arrest and detention order against Pınar Selek. The hearing was adjourned to 25 April 2025.
According to the news report of Evrim Kepenek from bianet; the court reminded that the committee had changed. Selek was represented by several lawyers, including his brother Seyda Selek and his father Alp Selek. The trial was also followed by activists, trade union representatives and rights defenders from France.
The lawyer of the defendant Abdülmecit Öztürk, Mehmet Erbil, made the following statements
"He was acquitted of the Egyptian Bazaar case and sentenced to 12 years and six months in prison for other offences. There was no appeal against this decision. Since this did not happen, he stated that his acquired rights were reserved. When the file came to the local court again, when the judgement was made against my client, a sentence of 12 years and six months imprisonment was determined. Apart from this, there was no appeal against him. He has served 9 years of this sentence. Therefore, we believe that issuing a warrant for his arrest is not in accordance with the procedure and the law."
Just before the hearing on 3 June, the Ministry of Interior had sent a letter to the court claiming that an academic festival event attended by Pınar Selek was a ‘PKK event’.
Pınar Selek's lawyer Bahri Belen used the following statements in his defence:
"We cannot see our petitions on UYAP. A few documents were added before. There were documents we submitted but we could not see them in UYAP. The attachment of our petition was important. There were documents and information from the university."
What happened?
Pınar Selek, who was on trial for the Egyptian Bazaar explosion in July 1998 in which 7 people were killed, was acquitted four times in the retrial for 25 years. Each time the court's judgements were overturned by the Court of Cassation.
All expert reports revealed that the explosion was not caused by a bomb, but by a gas leak. The other defendant who testified that he and Selek had planted a bomb in the Spice Bazaar stated that his testimony had been taken under torture and that he did not know Selek.
The acquittal verdict given for Selek in the fifth trial, which was last concluded in 2014, was overturned by the Criminal General Assembly of the Court of Cassation in 2022. Following the General Assembly's decision that Selek should be sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment, the case was retried for the sixth time.
Tags: human rights
