Turkey took legal steps, which could be important to prevent torture. There were also other legal reforms that should be done, such as; the ratification of the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention against Torture (OPCAT). In this regard, composing a monitoring, controlling institution.
However, despite legal reforms, there was always a deficiency. Although there was the utterance of “Zero tolerance to the torture”, a real preventive political will could not be showed. For example, neither a policeman nor a gendarmerie was removed from his/her position…
Political will did not use this kind of initiative to be preventive.
Until recent time, the judiciary did not make decision for arrest of any policeman or gendarmerie, who took part in crime of torture.
Court cases about torture lasted for a long period.
The Minister of Justice, Mr. Mehmet Ali Şahin, stated in August.
10.866 police and gendarmerie forces members were accused of torture to 4,662 people in 2006 and 2007.
None of the public servants are arrested.
However 170 citizens were arrested, for the reason that they resisted to police forces, during the same period.
There is a parallelism in attitude of the Judiciary and Executive organs.
This attitude is called as ‘the state’s impunity policy to crime of torture’ in human rights law.
If torture is a) common, b) continuous, and c) conducted deliberately in a country, it means there is a systematic torture.
Killing of Engin Ceber is not a several torture incident. Ceber is only one of the torture victims of the country in which torture is conducted systematically.
Anyone can be subjected to such a treatment in any time.
Can the phenomenon of torture, whose perpetrators are ten thousands and victims are thousands, be a several?
As human rights defenders, we want JUSTICE. There must be a legal procedure against murderers of Ceber.
We want to see a real penal legal investigation, which is appropriate to human rights law, not an investigation; report by an investigator.
The state must stop impunity policy! Tolerance to torture must be stopped! Torture must be stopped!
HUMAN RIGHTS ASSOCIATIN (IHD)