Compass--The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, France, has given the Turkish government until October 11 to submit written comments on its judicial review of the criminal conviction of Syrian Catholic Christian Soner Onder.
The third section of the Council of Europe's court informed the Republic of Turkey in a July 18 memorandum of the results of its initial deliberation on Onder's case, examined by ECHR justices on July 10.
In the seven-page memorandum, the Turkish government was requested to present its comments in writing to the ECHR tribunal on the "admissibility and merits" of three complaints filed by Onder's lawyer regarding the handling of his case.
The three claims found admissible by the court regarded "alleged ill treatment inflicted on [Onder] during his detention," the lack of "independence and impartiality of the National Security Court of Istanbul," and the length and fairness of his trial before this court.
The court unanimously adjourned its deliberations on Onder's case, pending the Turkish government's response to these claims by the set deadline.
For Onder, who has already marked 10 years in Turkish jails, the delay is nothing new.
His appeal to the Council of Europe's court has been pending for review since January of 1998, the month after his final conviction in the Turkish court system.
Arrested at age 17, Onder was accused of helping dozens of Kurdish extremists firebomb an Istanbul department store on December 25, 1991. The teenage defendant denied being present at the scene of the attack, which killed 12 people. But he was jailed without bail in Istanbul's notorious Bayrampasa Prison during the murder trial, which stretched over nearly three years.
According to his own testimony, Onder had been arrested off a bus on his way home from church, during a police sweep after the attack, and tortured to sign a confession.
But in the context of the high-profile murder trial, the court skipped over the medical report verifying his torture, as well as an affidavit by the metropolitan of his church, stating he had been attending Christmas Day services during the time of the attack. And despite police testimony that contradicted his arrest report, he was convicted and given the death penalty, commuted to a life sentence.
Onder's case was appealed at every possible level over the next three years by Hasip Kaplan, a well-known Turkish human rights lawyer. But the Turkish appellate courts refused to re-examine the evidence for his conviction. Kaplan did, however, win a reduced sentence for Onder, since he was under 18 years of age at the time of arrest and thus legally exempt from the death penalty meted out to him.
Now 27, Onder has since his conviction been incarcerated in Istanbul's high-security Umraniye Military Prison. He is currently being allowed visits from his family every 15 days. During the initial months of this year, the jail was closed to visitation in the wake of massive prison riots last December that left 30 prisoners and two guards dead and Onder's own barracks destroyed by fire.
The youngest of nine children, Onder has one brother and sister still residing in Istanbul. Most of his family, including his elderly mother, have emigrated from Turkey to Switzerland and Germany over the past two decades. His family has not given up hope that the ECHR will rule in his favor, even perhaps by the end of this year.
If Onder's conviction is not overturned by the ECHR, he would be eligible for parole on June 25, 2003, after serving three-fourths of his commuted death sentence.
Last month, the ECHR in Strasbourg handed down 34 verdicts in which Turkey was found guilty of human rights abuses. The Turkish republic was ordered on September 19 to pay a total of $375,000 in compensation to the aggrieved parties.
"Our international prestige has been eroded by these cases," Turkish Interior Minister Rustu Yucelen admitted in July. Some 2,700 Turkish cases have been filed at the human rights court since 1990, when Turkey formally recognized its judicial authority.
Riza Turmen, the sole Turkish judge serving at the ECHR, declared in May that the Turkish government should start charging the fine accessed by the ECHR to the police officials who commit torture. This would "act as a deterrent," he said, and force "widespread compliance with human rights." Turkey's poor human rights record remains a long-term stumbling block in its drive to join the European Union.