{"id":17143,"date":"2018-10-03T00:23:01","date_gmt":"2018-10-03T00:23:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=17143"},"modified":"2018-10-03T00:23:01","modified_gmt":"2018-10-03T00:23:01","slug":"turkey-court-upholds-life-sentences-for-prominent-journalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=17143","title":{"rendered":"Turkey court upholds life sentences for prominent journalists"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"body-200771816342556199\" readability=\"98.7726098191\">\n<p class=\"speakable\">A Turkish court has upheld life sentences for prominent journalists Ahmet Altan, Mehmet Altan, Nazli Ilicak and three others, on charges of aiding the plotters of a failed military coup in 2016, according to local media.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\"><span>The journalists, who were originally sentenced in February, were previously sentenced to life in prison for alleged links to the network of US-based religious leader and businessman Fethullah Gulen, accused by Ankara of orchestrating the coup attempt.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\"><span><span>They had\u00a0appealed to the high court for their release, but Istanbul&#8217;s 2nd Appeal Court upheld their sentence on Tuesday.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Mehmet Altan was later released from prison in June, but his sentence was also upheld on Tuesday, after a penal court rejected the constitutional court&#8217;s request for his release.<\/p>\n<p><span>All six are serving aggravated life sentences, which means they are not eligible for parole and cannot be included in future amnesty decisions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>The Turkish government has been carrying out purges and arrests that affected hundreds of thousands of people in the country after the<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/events\/turkey-attempted-coup.html\">\u00a02016 coup attempt<\/a><span>\u00a0that killed more than 300 people, including the plotters, wounded hundreds of others.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The government says the purges and detentions are legitimate, aiming at removing Gulen supporters from state institutions and other parts of society.<\/p>\n<p>Local and international rights groups, as well as many of Turkey&#8217;s European allies, say the measures are arbitrary, claiming that the government is using the coup attempt as a pretext to silence opposition in the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Turkish court has upheld life sentences for prominent journalists Ahmet Altan, Mehmet Altan, Nazli Ilicak and three others, on charges of aiding the plotters of a failed military coup in 2016, according to local media. The journalists, who were originally sentenced in February, were previously sentenced to life in prison for alleged links to&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":17144,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}