Human rights during interrogations

On the morning of March 5, Mustafa Balbay, a columnist for the daily Cumhuriyet, was arrested along with Neriman Aydın and brought to the Ankara police department’s counter-terrorism branch. After giving testimony, they were sent to the Istanbul courthouse in Beşiktaş at noon. The detainees were questioned by the prosecutor and then received a check-up.

Balbay’s interrogation at the prosecutor’s office lasted for 10 hours. The two suspects were delivered to another court around 12:30 a.m. Balbay faced the 14th high criminal court at 3 a.m. If we assume that he was taken in around 4 or 5 a.m., this means he did not sleep for 22 or 23 hours. The judge on call gave 15-minute breaks and the questioning went on for six hours.

The European Court of Human Rights, or ECHR, makes a distinction between torture and mistreatment. In torture, the motives for forcing the accused to confess are looked at, but in mistreatment, they are not. In addition, the degree of pain they cause to a suspect are different. In mistreatment, a certain pain threshold is at issue.

What torture and mistreatment have in common is they cannot be justified under any circumstances. The seriousness of the crime does not justify torture or mistreatment.

In a case where Ireland sued British authorities for torturing Irish Republican Army, or IRA, terrorists, the ECHR stated that in order to determine whether or not a suspect had been mistreated, the physical or mental impact of the alleged mistreatment and its duration, along with the gender, age and health of the suspect, should be considered.

The ECHR in this case examined five interrogation methods applied on IRA terrorists, including deliberate sleep deprivation. The other four techniques were keeping suspects in a standing position in front of a wall, putting a sack over their heads, exposing them to high volumes of noise and keeping them hungry and thirsty. The court ruled that British authorities were guilty of mistreatment. England has since banned these types of interrogation methods.

Sleep deprivation and deception are banned

According to the ECHR verdict, the techniques applied by the British authorities cause physical and mental pain as well as acute psychiatric discomfort, even though they do not do physical damage to the body.

As can be deduced from the court’s decision, deliberate sleep deprivation may be a form of mistreatment. However, legal channels in Turkey should be tried before taking such a complaint to the ECHR.

Article 148 in the Code of Criminal Procedure bans mistreatment, torture, the deliberate creation of fatigue, deception and the use of force or threats, and says that statements of a suspect or accused should be given of their own free will. It also says that testimonies obtained through unlawful means cannot be used as evidence, even if they were taken with consent.

Unlawful testimonies

Another issue is the admission of depositions obtained as a result of mistreatment as evidence. Testimonies taken in an unlawful manner are certainly banned by the ECHR. They are evaluated as part of the violation of the right to a fair trial as stated in Article 6 of the Human Rights Convention, or HRC. Whether they are supported by other evidence or not is unimportant.

If the ECHR decides that Article 3 of the HRC has been violated during an interrogation, it also reaches a verdict on the violation of the right to a fair trial if such testimonies are approved. However, even if there is no violation of Article 3, in some cases, statements obtained through force may be in violation of Article 6. In interrogations, universal law should be obeyed for the sake of conducting the judicial process in a sound and healthy way.



Rõza Türmen is a former judge of the European Court of Human Rights, or ECHR, and a columnist for the daily Milliyet in which this piece appeared Friday. It was translated into English by the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review's staff