Kurdish preacher claims Gulen-linked police tortured him in custody

“I was brutally beaten and tortured by the police for 13 days in the police department." That's what our daily heard from a Kurdish preacher from Batman in the predominantly Kurdish Southeast.

The preacher, Murat Güneş, was detained by the police on Dec. 8, 1998, a month after Cevzet Soysal, his father-in-law, had been taken under custody for allegedly having ties with the Hezbollah, an armed group designated as a terrorist organization in Turkey.  Güneş was forced to sign his confession under severe torture and sentenced to seven years in prison when he was brought before the court as a contributor to Hezbollah.

In his interview with Yenişafak, he recounted gruesome torture episodes, committed by the police at the bottom field of the police department.

“They tied my hands behind my back and suspended me in the air with a rope attached to my wrists, to dislocate my arms. I was tortured with electric shocks and a water cannon,” he said. “They were playing Janissary music. I heard them and could not see their faces, because I was blindfolded under torture.”

The former detainees said the police asked him if he knew about the U.S.-based cleric Gulen who faced warrant in Turkey on charges of forming and running a terror group. “When I confessed I have not heard anything about him, they said ‘if you do not know him you will wait to learn’ and they began to torture,” he said. “They stopped torturing when I fainted due to starvation. I did not eat or drink anything, so I could  faint; then, they would stop torturing my body.”

According to his statement, the police took Güneş to a vacant field near the Batman stream and threatened to kill him, while he was under custody. “They held a gun to my head and said ‘you will either give us the information we want or we will also send you where your father-in-law is,” he said. “I understood what happened to my father-in-law at that moment, but did have nothing neither to protect myself nor to bring him back.”

The police stopped torturing Güneş two days before he was brought before the court, to allow his wounds to heal. “When I was first jailed, a prisoner guard shed his tears for me, when he saw my injuries, which have not been fully recovered.”    

The man was barely able to speak when recalling what happened on the night he was detained.  His wife took the floor, saying her son was mistreated when the police raided on our house at 3 am on that night.  “The street was suddenly filled with armored vehicles. One police officer pushed my boy against the wall when he ran to his father. He was only one year old, “ said Hicran Güneş.

“My husband was just teaching children how to read the Holy Koran at a course held at a mosque. He did not commit any crime that the police claimed he had been involved in,” she said. “He was wrongfully imprisoned and there should be legal action taken against the police who caused him to spend years in prison, being away from his family for seven years,” she added.