Journalist Zeynep Kuray who has been released from prison recently spoke to 20-year-old university student Berkay Ustabaş who was severely wounded during the brutal police attack targeting demonstrators in Istanbul on May Day.

Ustabaş, student at Sociology department of Istanbul University, nearly lost his left eye because of the stone thrown by a police officer during the clashes in Şişli on 1 May. Ustabaş, whose left eye's retina was torn, also faced police repression at the Şişli Eftal hospital he was rushed to by his friends after the incident. Plainclothes policemen searched the young boy and interrogated him at the hospital without allowing him to receive medical treatment.

Ustabaş told Kuray the followings about the police repression he suffered from that day, “Riot police teams prevented us from reaching the hospital despite seeing that I was severely wounded. Then we took a taxi and made our way to hospital where we were in the same way hindered by a group of police officers. They started to search my body and to question me yet as I was being taken to the examination room. When they said me that I had been wounded by a stone thrown by demonstrators, I told them that I had been targeted and hit by a stone a police officer had thrown at me. Then they denied me to get examined, while at the same time shouting and insulting me and trying to get the medical staff out of the examination room. The strong reaction by my friends forced them to leave the room, however by threatening my friends with arrest”.

According to Ustabaş, who narrowly escaped losing his sight, police teams deliberately used stones to give the impression that demonstrators were wounded with the stones thrown by their friends.