Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor's Office has issued an arrest warrant for Azadiya Welat Editor in chief Rohat Aktaş who was murdered in a basement after getting shot in Cizre where he was covering the attacks of state forces. The arrest warrant was issued because he did not give his statement in the scope of a case opened against him 4 months after his death.

19-year-old Aktaş was covering the genocidal attacks of Turkish state forces in Şırnak's Cizre district when he got wounded as result of a bombardment targeting the house where he was staying in Cudi neighborhood. He later took shelter in the basement of a building alongside many other people with injuries. The last phone contact with Aktaş was made on February 6, 2016 while he was still in the basement, and no news was received from him afterwards.

Turkish military and police forces hindered all the attempts for the evacuation of those wounded in the basement, and their transportation to hospital for treatment. The calls made to the European Court of Human Rights for urgent measure for the wounded people did also remain inconclusive.

As result of DNA match with the blood sample given by Aktaş family for the determination of his body, which was unidentifiable because it was burned like the bodies of many others who had similarly taken shelter in the basements, it was revealed later that body of Aktaş was being kept at the Forensic Medicine Institute temporarily set up at the Khabur Border Gate.

Bodies of Aktaş and DBP (Democratic Regions Party) Party Assembly member Mehmet Yavuzel, who was also massacred in the same basement, were identified on February 24, 2016. Aktaş and Yavuzel were buried next to each other in Suruç district of Urfa on February 26, 2016.

The 10-page indictment prepared by Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor's Office and approved by Diyarbakır 4th High Criminal Court asks up to 7,5 year prison sentence and judicial fine for Azadiya Welat Editor in chief Rohat Aktaş for “spreading terror propaganda” in 16 issues of the Kurdish daily published in November and December 2015.

The chief public prosecutor ruled that the Editor in chief of the newspaper was found responsible for the “crime elements” in the mentioned issues as the writers of the news and reports in question could not be identified. According to the prosecutor, suspect Rohat Aktaş could not be reached for testimony and therefore an arrest warrant was issued for him on May 9, 2016.

While the case against Aktaş continues at Diyarbakır 4th High Criminal Court, the hearing was postponed to May because Aktaş "couldn't be captured".