The second hearing of the lawsuit against Osman Şiban, who was tortured and thrown off a helicopter by Turkish soldiers in the Çatak district of Van province in 2020, was held at Mersin 2nd High Criminal Court on Thursday. Şiban is accused of “membership in a terrorist organization”. While Şiban and his lawyers were present at the hearing, two witnesses were connected to the courtroom via the sound and video information system (SEGBİS).

The 51-year-old Kurdish man stated that he neither recognized those two witnesses nor agreed with their statements. “When the state finally allowed people’s return to the previously evacuated village, I went back there and built a house, where I stayed during certain months of the year. No member of a terrorist organization ever came to my house. I live in the highland, and I did not witness any activity there either. I stay in my house there for two months a year. My house is empty for the remaining 10 months. I demand my acquittal.”

One of the witnesses, Y.S., claimed that the information he gave to the police was reliable and Şiban was “a member of the organization,” meaning the PKK.

While the prosecutor demanded that Şiban be sentenced for “membership in a terrorist organization,” his lawyers requested additional time to defend their client.

The court accepted the lawyers' request and postponed the hearing until April 11.

BACKGROUND

The indictment of Osman Şiban is seen as an act of revenge by the controlled judiciary and the military. The Kurdish man is both a witness and a victim of one of the most serious attacks by the Turkish army on the Kurdish civilian population in recent years. Together with 55-year-old Servet Turgut, Osman Şiban was detained on 11 September 2020 near Çatak district during field work by soldiers from a Turkish operations unit. After severe torture, they were pushed out of a military helicopter and they suffered serious injuries.

After the ordeal, Osman Şiban and Servet Turgut were taken to different hospitals. The military told the medical staff that the two men were terrorists and had been injured when they tried to escape from a helicopter. Şiban survived the ordeal while Servet Turgut died after twenty days in a coma.

As evidence for Osman Şiban's alleged PKK membership, the indictment lists, among other things, three spare fuel canisters that were allegedly discovered in open ground in a hamlet in Çatak. Because Şiban's house, which he only lives in during the summer - the rest of the year he lives in the coastal metropolis of Mersin - is close to where they were found, the canisters could only have been taken there by the 51-year-old, the prosecution argues. They also say that the area of the hamlet where Şiban's house is located was flown over by a reconnaissance drone on 9 September 2020. The evaluation of the collected data is alleged to have shown that at the time of the control flights, there were activities in the area that "did not fit coherently into the usual flow of life". Last but not least, the prosecution refers to the statements of a supposed witness who - if he exists at all - claims to have stated that Osman Şiban's house had been regularly visited by PKK cadres Murat Karayılan and Mahsum Korkmaz (killed in Gabar on 28 March 1986) in the 1980s and 1990s.