Eight lawyers have been under police custody since 1st of November in Kastamonu, and a lawyer has been under police custody since 2nd of November in Batman.

According to the Arrested Lawyers Initiative, seven woman lawyers were detained in the province of Erzurum on Wednesday, and also lawyer Selcuk Kozağaçlı who is the president of Progressive Lawyers Association that was shut down with an emergency decree was detained in Istanbul.

Selçuk Kozağaçlı has been representing the Soma Mine Disaster Victims, hunger strike activists Nuriye Gülmen and Semih Özakça and many other persecuted people.

Kozağaçlı revealed during the Ankara Bar Association’s general assembly on Oct. 16 2016 that people imprisoned as part of a government crackdown on the Gülen movement are being systematically tortured in the most barbaric ways including rape, removal of nails and the insertion of objects into their anuses.

“There has been a relentless campaign of arrests which has targeted fellow lawyers across the country. In 77 of Turkey’s 81 provinces, lawyers have been detained and arrested on trumped-up charges as part of criminal investigations orchestrated by the political authorities and conducted by provincial public prosecutors”, said the Arrested Lawyers Initiative.

According to the figures by the Initiative, as of today, 555 lawyers are arrested and 1433 lawyers are under prosecution, 62 lawyers were sentenced to long imprisonment. Some of the arrested lawyers were subjected to torture and ill-treatment.