The British government has stepped up the pressure on the Turkish authorities over the arrests of two British journalists on terror charges, reminding Turkey of its obligations under human rights law.
The unusual step came as Vice News, which employs the journalists, said that they and their Turkey-based colleague have been moved to a high security prison.
Philip Pendlebury, Jake Hanrahan and Mohammed Ismael Rasool have all been charged by a Turkish court with “aiding a terrorist organisation”. On Wednesday, Vice said the trio had been transferred to a facility about five hours from where their lawyers were based.
“This move appears to be a blatant obstruction of the fair legal process that Turkey has repeatedly pledged to uphold. We call on the Turkish government to throw out these ridiculous charges and immediately release our colleagues,” said its head of news programming in Europe, Kevin Sutcliffe.
That coincided with the strengthening of the UK government’s position on Wednesday, with the Foreign Office saying it was “concerned” about the arrests.
In a statement, it said: “Respect for freedom of expression and the right of media to operate without restriction are fundamental in any democratic society. Turkey is a state party to the European Convention on Human Rights and UN Declaration of Human Rights. We would expect the Turkish authorities to uphold the obligations enshrined in those agreements.
“The journalists have been given access to a lawyer and were in direct contact with consular officials within 24 hours of their detention.”
All three were arrested on last Thursday, along with their driver, in the south eastern Turkish province of Diyarbakir, where they were reporting on the conflict between the country’s government and the youth wing of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The driver was subsequently released without charge.
In an article published on the Vice News site on Wednesday, Sutcliffe said: “Vice News condemns in the strongest possible terms the Turkish government’s attempts to silence our reporters who have been providing vital coverage from the region. We continue to work with all relevant authorities to expedite the safe release of our three colleagues and friends.”
On Wednesday, he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Turkish authorities had accused his colleagues of being involved with two separate organisations that they defined as terrorists: the PKK and Islamic State. He pointed out that, since the two are at war with each other, it is unlikely anyone could work for both.
Asked if he wanted the British government to exert diplomatic pressure or to adopt a more hands-off approach in the hope that Turkey would relent, he said: “It’s a very difficult situation that the Turkish authorities have got themselves into and we would like to help them out of that”.
Sutcliffe told the programme: “It is quite an old fashioned story, isn’t it? Journalists trying to bring a story that is underreported out in an old-fashioned way, which is eyewitness reporting, and a government doing a very old fashioned thing, which is arresting journalists to try top stop them getting that story out.”
He said Vice News learned its journalists had been transferred to the high security prison after a court hearing on Tuesday and that it had not managed to contact them since.
Sutcliffe, who formerly worked for Channel 4 and the BBC, insisted that Vice News’ safety and risk assessment procedures were as robust as those of other major news organisations.
There were also reports on Wednesday that the allegations against the journalists centred on encryption software found on Rasool’s computer, which the Turkish authorities believe to be similar to that used by the Islamic State militants.
Al-Jazeera quoted an anonymous Turkish press official as saying: “The main issue seems to be that the fixer uses a complex encryption system on his personal computer that a lot of Isil militants also utilise for strategic communications.”
Rasool was named and pictured for the first time in Wednesday’s Vice News article.