Misleading information on impunity

SOURCE: HRFTHuman Rights Foundation of Turkey

translated by DTFDemocratic Turkey Forum

The news provided by Anatolian News Agency that was reflected in the press on 13 June 2007 stating that 5,082 police officers among 33,000 civil servants charged with torture or ill-treatment between 1989 and 2005 had been punished is based on wrong and incomplete evaluation of official data.

The parliamentary question that was the basis for the news is the result of an effort of the Human Rights Foundation (HRFT) to obtain figures on the number of imprisoned civil servants on charges of torture or ill-treatment. The HRFT continuously asked the Ministry of Justice for such figures for the years 1999 to 2005 in order to establish the level of impunity and the effects of changes in legislation on the practice. The questions were forwarded to the Statistic Institution of Turkey and rejected on the basis that no such figures existed.

Therefore Ankara deputy Yakup Kepenek tabled a parliamentary request on the same question. The Justice Ministry forwarded the request to the Ministry of the Interior and the answer was based on data provided by the General Directorate for judicial Records and Statistics. The fact that important information in the footnotes was omitted led to mistakes. The official information states

• There is no information on the kind of trials and verdicts between 1989 and 1993. Only the number of trials and defendants is known.
• Since 1994 details on sentences, acquittals etc. have been collected. Since 2002 details on the defendants have been noted. There are no details in the answer on the number of defendants between 1994 and 2001. The article in the press took the number of trials as the number of defendants. There were 2,422 trails between 1994 and 2001 that ended in conviction. By adding the number of defendants that were sentenced between 2002 and 2005 the figure of 5,082 officers having been "convicted" was reached.

The figures according to the General Directorate for judicial Records and Statistics should be:

• No information on the number of civil servants convicted until 2002 is available. Among 9,804 civil servants charged with torture or ill-treatment between 2002 and 2005 a total of 615 were convicted for torture and 2,045 for ill-treatment. It is still not known how many of the sentences have been executed. Many sentences are suspended and imprisonment is often commuted to fines.
• Of a total of 3,367 trials for torture (1,035) and ill-treatment (2,332) 463 cases were dropped; 1,345 cases were suspended according to Law 4616 or stopped for other reasons. In short, of 7,597 trials 5,175 ended without a conviction. If the number of trials where the sentences were suspended or commuted to fines would be added the rate of trials without punishment can be estimated.
• Between 1989 and 2005 24,556 civil servants were tried for torture in 3,653 cases and 33,281 civil servants were tried in 17,517 trials on ill-treatment. Between 1994 and 2005 12,215 trials on torture (2,374) and ill-treatment (9,481) were concluded. Of these trials 2,422 ended in conviction between 1994 and 2001. Between 2002 and 2005 2,660 civil servants were convicted.

The same request revealed that all disciplinary penalties were lifted with Law 5525 so that figures only exist for the time after 14 February 2005. Since then disciplinary investigations were conducted for 922 staff members and 8 of them received penalties. This figure illustrates impunity on the disciplinary level.

The data collected by the Ministry of Justice but announced by the Ministry of the Interior does not comply with official figures on the crimes of torture and ill-treatment. It also does not comply with the experience of expert individuals and institutions that fight against torture and impunity. The data does not contain the information requested from the HRFT and does not remove the concern that torture is not punished with imprisonment and not in an adequate manner. On the contrary the data provided as "punishment" includes cases that have resulted in fines or were suspended and in that sense camouflages the picture.

The figures provided are open for discussion, but show that torture is still a basic problem. According to international norms and standards to which Turkey is a State party the States have an obligation to follow a politics of punishing torture according to its weight, if they want to prevent torture. In this sense the government should not just try to create the impression that "torture is effectively punished" but has to make sure that the crime of torture is punished with effective penalties that can be executed and are a deterrent. Figures on the number of civil servants that were imprisoned for these crimes (either in pre-trial detention or in executing a sentence) have to be announced.