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‘I was tortured in a Turkish jail,’ journalist says

JOURNALIST Ayten Ozturk has told harrowing details of alleged kidnap and torture by Turkish intelligence services who held her captive for 6 months in a secret dungeon subjecting her to electrocution and the threat of rape.

She described the torture basement where she was kept hooded and handcuffed and subjected to daily abuse, as “a place where humanity ended.”

In a message seen by the Star and read out at a court hearing, Ms Ozturk explains how she was held in a secret torture room after being detained on March 8, 2018  at a Lebanon airport when she was handed over to her Turkish intelligence captors.

Over a six-month period she suffered systematic physical and psychological torture and was told: “This is the basement of hell. You’re not getting out of here. You won’t die, but you’ll beg to die. If you get out one day, you will have lost your sanity.”

Ms Ozturk alleged that she was blindfolded and forced onto a private jet that took her from Lebanon to Turkey. On arrival her mouth was taped shut and she was thrown into the basement cell naked and handcuffed.

She said a man entered the room and told her that he wanted information from her – details they already knew but wanted to confirm. If she spoke to them, he claimed she could leave.

“I’ve been given infinite authority over you,” he said. The [Turkish] state has lifted a private plane for you. This place is no different. Everyone here does their job professionally. You can’t leave if you don’t talk. [You could be here] for months, for years...Will you talk?” he asked.

The journalist explained she was chained to a wall and electrocuted.

“When they did that, my whole body was trembling shaking, screaming with my last voice,” she said.

“They threatened to crack my toes with pliers. They put a pointy thing under my three nails and burned my pinky finger. 

“The wound on my finger and the inflammation in my fingernail didn’t heal for months. At times, they turned me upside down and tied my feet and beat them.”

Ms Ozturk said her torturers also “waterboarded” her, holding her head under water as she was blindfolded until she choked for breath.

They threatened to use a stick to rape her, she explained.

After refusing food, her torturers forced a tube down her throat and made her take liquids. Blood came from her nose and mouth and she became weakened after losing weight, barely able to stand.

After six months of daily torture, she said she was taken blindfolded and cuffed from the basement and dropped in an unknown place in Ankara where she was picked up by police who acted as if they just happened to find her there. 

They took her into custody where she has been ever since and she has faced trumped-up terror charges including membership of a terrorist organisation, which she denies.

Ms Ozturk told the hearing that she had been living in Syria during the “war conditions” and had lost many family members during that time.

Her father died when she was held in her torture chamber, she explained, and although didn’t know where she was, knew she was alive.

“My family hasn’t heard from me in six months. I was buried in a living tomb at the time. Can you imagine the pain inflicted on my loved ones?” she said.

Following her time in Syria she wanted to go and live in a European country “because of the war conditions” she had been living in.

It was while travelling there that she was detained at a Lebanon airport on charges of using fake documents.

“I am a person of anti-imperialist, internationalism, revolutionary, democratic thoughts,” she said, adding that this case is really about her torture.

“I have no connection with an illegal organisation, no code words. I haven’t committed any illegal activity. 

“I want six months of torture and researched and prosecuted. I will continue all my legal initiatives to detail the crimes of the Lebanese government who delivered me to my tormenters from Turkey and to charge those responsible. I demand my release and my acquittal,” she said.

The trial has been adjourned until October 3, 2019. Ms Ozturk’s detention continues.

“The wounds on my body are healed; But the wounds inside me will never be healed,” she said.

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