Deniz Tekin
An indictment of 43 pages has been prepared against Dicle Müftüoğlu, Co-President of the Dicle Fırat Journalists Association, with 40 pages of it containing information on the establishment, functioning, and activities of the PKK and KCK, similar to the indictment prepared against Sedat Yılmaz. The indictment does not include any of Müftüoğlu's statements made to the police, prosecution, and peace criminal judges regarding the accusations against her.
According to Article 160 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (CMK), public prosecutors are "obligated to collect and preserve evidence favorable and unfavorable to the suspect and to protect the rights of the suspect." The absence of Müftüoğlu's statements responding to the accusations in the indictment constitutes a violation of this provision.
The indictment includes statements and photo identifications made by a witness named K.G., who benefited from effective remorse, at the Ankara Counter-Terrorism Branch Directorate on January 9, 2020, without a lawyer present.
According to the Law on the Duties and Authorities of the Police, identification cannot be conducted with a single photo. It is understood from the identification record in the investigation file that only one photograph of Dicle Müftüoğlu was shown to the witness for identification.
In his statement, K.G. claimed to have seen Müftüoğlu during a press and broadcast training given to organization cadres in the Xinerê area in Iraq in 2014, stating he had no knowledge of her activities after that date. The indictment alleges that Müftüoğlu went to the organization's responsibility areas in the Kandil Mountains in Iraq, despite her first recorded international entry and exit through the Şırnak-Habur border gate being in 2017, a contradiction not addressed in the indictment. A secret witness identified by the code "K8Ç4B3L1T5" claimed in the indictment that Müftüoğlu was actively involved at a responsible level with the Mezopotamya Agency in Diyarbakır, affiliated with the Press Committee, and was instructed to produce news favorable to the organization.
Witness K.G. has appeared as a witness in numerous trials, including the closure of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) and the Kobanê cases, which concern Kurdish politics and the judiciary's treatment of opposition figures. The secret witness "K8Ç4B3L1T5" was also a witness in a case against 9 journalists from JINNEWS, MA, and Yeni Yaşam, who were arrested in Ankara in 2022. "K8Ç4B3L1T5" testified in the trial of the 9 journalists in Ankara on July 5, 2023, confirming participation in activities on behalf of the state.
The indictment alleges that call records to and from Müftüoğlu's phone (HTS) are shown as evidence of crime, claiming calls made with her fellow journalists under investigation in the same file—Sedat Yılmaz, MA reporter Özgür Paksoy, Xwebun Editorial Manager Mehmet Ali Ertaş, and Hatice Şahin—were "organizational activities." The majority of the phone signals of the other 52 suspects in the file, residing in Diyarbakır, coming from the same base station, were interpreted in the indictment as "designing organizational activities."
The Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that the mere presence and signaling of different mobile phones within the coverage area of the same base station does not necessarily mean those individuals met or were together at the time of the crime or that the crime was committed by those individuals.
The "HTS Analysis Report and Evaluation Minutes" dated April 16, 2023, covering base station information from 2013-2021, contains no information about Müftüoğlu's travels abroad.
An examination of the Habur Border Gate records argued that consecutive international entry and exit records of Müftüoğlu, due to her connections and contacts with the organization, were contrary to the ordinary course of life. These records were claimed to align with witness statements that Müftüoğlu attended organizational meetings in Iraq. The indictment mentioned a report prepared by MASAK on April 2, 2021, suggesting Müftüoğlu had financial transactions with individuals processed for being members of the organization. However, there was no information in the indictment about Müftüoğlu's bank account movements from the date the MASAK report was prepared until the day she was detained. The "Financial Analysis Report" prepared by the police on April 12, 2023, considered Müftüoğlu's SGK registration at DİHA and MA as criminal evidence. Bank transactions between Müftüoğlu, a member and Co-President of the association, and her journalist colleagues Özgür Paksoy and Rohat (Zeynel) Bulut, were interpreted as "organizational contact."
The "Research, Detection, and Evaluation Report" prepared by the police on April 15, 2023, suggested that Müftüoğlu participated in legal/illegal actions and events organized by a political party and civil society organizations under the guidance of PKK and KCK. However, the names of the NGOs and the dates and locations of these actions were not specified in the document.
The indictment asserts that Müftüoğlu had numerous call records with 335 organization members, against whom judicial proceedings were conducted by different courts, and these unknown content conversations were claimed to be for organizing organizational activities and actions. It was alleged in the indictment that Müftüoğlu actively conducted her social life in a way that strictly adhered to secrecy, under the guise of the ideological center of the PKK/KCK, according to the organization's ideology and directives, with the evidence in the file leaving no doubt about her clear and explicit involvement in organizational activities.
