Prison sentence for journalist Bahadır Özgür!

A prison sentence has been handed down to journalist Bahadır Özgür due to a speech he gave at a book fair he attended in 2022.

According to the report in Evrensel, a lawsuit was filed against Özgür by the Mudanya Chief Public Prosecutor's Office for his speech at the Mudanya Book Fair on October 2, 2022, on charges of 'insulting the State of the Republic of Turkey, the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, the Government of the Republic of Turkey, and the judicial organs.'

An indictment was prepared seeking a prison sentence of 6 months to 2 years for Özgür. The Mudanya 1st Criminal Court of First Instance accepted the indictment and opened the criminal case on May 22, 2024.

In the final hearing of the case, the court panel sentenced him to 3 months and 22 days in prison. The verdict was suspended due to the "deferment of the announcement of the verdict."

WHAT HAPPENED?

Approximately two and a half years ago, Bahadır Özgür participated in a talk at the Mudanya Book Fair alongside Workers' Party of Turkey (TİP) MP Ahmet Şık.

Özgür spoke about the content of the book titled “The Wall: Sedat Peker’s Confessions, Disclosures, and Allegations,” which he co-authored with Timur Soykan, Ahmet Şık, Ertuğrul Mavioğlu, and Hakkı Özdal. The book contains comprehensive research on the mafia-politics relations, starting from the Susurluk scandal to today's drug trade, the Sezgin Baran Korkmaz money laundering case, and the rise of Ayhan Bora Kaplan as a criminal organization leader. In his speech at the fair, Özgür explained the mafia-politics-state relations that have persisted from Uğur Mumcu’s “Pope-Mafia-Ağca” investigation to the present day, and why the cases opened during this process could not be concluded.

News Source: 12punto