Appeal filed against Resul Emrah Şahan's detention: First statement from lawyer Hüseyin Ersöz

Lawyers Hüseyin Ersöz, Buse Şahin, and Enes Ermaner, representing Şişli Mayor Resul Emrah Şahan—who was arrested as part of the 'urban consensus' investigation launched into the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality (İBB) and subsequently replaced by a trustee—have submitted a petition to the criminal judgeship of peace to appeal his detention.

Lawyer Hüseyin Ersöz made statements regarding the appeal in front of the Çağlayan Courthouse.

Ersöz's statements are as follows:

"As the lawyers for Resul Emrah Şahan, we are at the Çağlayan Courthouse. As you know, Şişli Mayor Resul Emrah Şahan was issued an arrest warrant last week and is currently being held at the Silivri Closed Penal Execution Institution. We had previously shared with you that we would exercise our legal rights throughout this process.

Our first application in this regard will be the appeal process against the arrest warrant, which we characterize as unjust and unlawful, and which was issued despite the lack of legal requirements. Last week, the Istanbul 10th Criminal Judgeship of Peace issued an arrest warrant for our client, Resul Emrah Şahan. With the petition we have prepared today, we will appeal this arrest warrant. Our appeal will first be reviewed by the Criminal Judgeship of Peace, and if the Criminal Judgeship of Peace does not reverse its own decision, our petition will then go to the duty Criminal Court of First Instance, where it will be reviewed once more.

First and foremost, we want to share with you that this process is unjust and contrary to the law, and that the evidence in question is not of a nature to require a detention measure against our client, the elected Mayor of Şişli. You are also aware that the allegations against our client are based on base station records. Regarding this matter, we obtained a scientific opinion from Tuncay Beşikçi, the only forensic informatics engineer in Turkey. This scientific opinion contains findings that the HTS records and base station data, which are cited as the justification for the arrest, cannot be accepted as evidence in any way; that the contact between individuals cannot be definitively determined based on this data; and that the assessments made claiming that individuals were side-by-side based solely on HTS and base station data do not comply with the law. We will share this with the Criminal Judgeship of Peace as an annex to our appeal petition and will request that the Criminal Court of First Instance also evaluate this issue.

Furthermore, our petition includes detailed evaluations regarding the evidence in our favor, which we have repeatedly stated during the prosecutor's testimony, the Criminal Judgeship of Peace interrogation, and the police statement. All of these evaluations are fundamentally based on court decisions and actions taken by prosecutors. We have previously explained to you that almost all of the allegations against our client are of the same nature as certain posts made on an X social media account in the past, about a year ago, even just before the election period. Our detailed evaluations regarding the criminal complaint process we initiated 1 year ago regarding this matter are also included in the petition, and the permanent search warrant for the unidentified person in those posts is also addressed in detail in our petition.

In summary, I want to share with you once again that this detention measure is unjust and unlawful, and that it does not coincide with the evidence in the file and does not constitute strong suspicion of a crime. In this context, I hope that as a result of the review to be conducted by both the Criminal Judgeship of Peace and the Istanbul Duty Criminal Court of First Instance, this unjust decision will be reversed and our client will be able to regain his freedom as soon as possible. He is the elected mayor of Şişli with a record-breaking vote of approximately 70%. In this context, it is clear that the detention measure is not proportionate. It is clear in any case that there is no suspicion of flight. In this context, all of these evaluations are addressed in detail in our 35-page petition. We are hopeful that these will be evaluated in detail by the judgeship and that a decision will be made to ensure our client regains his freedom. I would like to share with you once again that this approach would be an approach that complies with both the law and universal legal principles."

News Source : 12punto