European Rights Court: Turkey unlawfully jailed Amnesty head

ANDREW WILKS

ISTANBUL (AP) — The European Court of Human Rights says Turkey had unlawfully detained the head of the country’s Amnesty International branch for 14 months. In a judgement issued Tuesday, the Strasbourg-based court ruled there were no reasonable grounds to warrant the “unlawful and arbitrary” detention of Taner Kilic. He was arrested in June 2017 on suspicion of belonging to the group Ankara accuses of orchestrating a 2016 coup attempt. The court also decided that his incarceration on a second set of terrorism-related charges was “directly linked to his activity as a human rights defender” and therefore interfered with his freedom of expression.