FIFTH SESSION OF ERGENEKON TRIAL TO BE HELD TODAY
Today’s Zaman
Oct 30 2008
Turkey
The fifth session of the trial of 86 suspects on charges of involvement
in Ergenekon, a criminal network accused of plotting to overthrow
the government, will be held today.
The session will be spent reading of the massive indictment, which
is expected to take at least another three weeks.
The Ä°stanbul 13th High Criminal Court is hearing the case in a
makeshift courtroom inside Silivri Prison, near Ä°stanbul. Among
the 86 suspects are retired Gen. Veli Kucuk, Workers’ Party (Ä°P)
leader Dogu Perincek, former Ä°stanbul University Rector Kemal
Alemdaroglu, lawyer Kemal Kerincsiz, who is known for filing suits
against intellectuals over their writings questioning or criticizing
the state line on issues such as Armenian allegations of genocide, and
retired Capt. Muzaffer Tekin. Forty-six of the suspects are in custody,
and the rest have been released pending the outcome of the trial.
Since some of the suspects’ lawyers demanded earlier this week that
the 2,455-page indictment be read out loud, the court will spend a
significant amount of time with this process. The prosecution was able
to finish only 120 pages of the indictment in the first two sessions
which were spent reading from it.
Journalists, who timed the prosecutor’s speed — and found that one
page takes about seven minutes on average — estimate it should take
at least 280 hours to finish reading the 2,455-page indictment.
–Boundary_(ID_aZjvkJcwxS94X0kizvwSCQ )–