Keskin’s Legal Team Deprived of Information

The hearing in the case against Fatih Keskin, whose permanent residence in Bosnia and Herzegovina was cancelled by the Service for Foreigners’ Affairs, was closed to public.

After the hearing attorney Nedim Ademovic addressed journalists in front of the Bosnian State Court building and said this concerned the setting aside of a decision according to which Keskin should stay at the Immigration Center. He explained that, in this proceeding the defense was trying to enable Keskin to defend himself from liberty in other cases referring to his right of residence in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network Bosnia and Herzegovina, BIRN BiH, previously reported that the Service for Foreigners’ Affairs Cancelled the Permanent Residence for Keskin, who was arrested in Bihac on December 3 and then transferred to the Immigration Center of the Service for Foreigners’ Affairs.

“By the law, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina was obliged to hear our client, have him present his defense today. We expected we would receive minimum information from the Court on why Keskin had been declared a threat to national security and public order. Unfortunately, we were unable to present an adequate defense,” Ademovic said, adding that the documentation, if any, collected by the Security Intelligence Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina and submitted to competent institutions, had not been presented to the defense.

Attorney Ademovic considers that the right to defense presupposes that the Court should provide minimum information despite the fact that the documents were allegedly marked confidential, so an adequate defense could be offered.

“In this way, we can only hypothetically offer our defense from something we have neither heard nor seen, because in this situation all of us can be declared a threat to national security,” he said, adding that the Court should render a decision within the next three days.

Keskin’s attorney said he had presented evidence that Keskin resided in Bosnia and Herzegovina legally, that he was a credible family man who had never made a criminal offence anywhere. He said the defense had also provided evidence showing that Keskin had not been prosecuted in Turkey in any way.

“We also referred to minister Mekic’s arguments, as he said that his passport had allegedly been cancelled. We do not have that documentation. We claim this is a political persecution, which was agreed upon at the political level and was practically supposed to result in Keskin’s kidnapping and deportation to Turkey by emergency procedure, where he would be detained without any rights,” attorney Ademovic explained.

He pointed out that all international organizations confirmed that people who were being politically prosecuted by Turkey throughout the world did not have the right to a fair trial in Turkey.

“I hope the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina will take those arguments into consideration, set aside the decision depriving Keskin of liberty, release him from the Immigration Center so we can continue the procedures in which we shall prove that his deprivation of the right to liberty in Bosnia and Herzegovina was illegal and he can continue living freely with his family just like all of us, free citizens, in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Ademovic said.

He said that the Keskin case would become an international reason for which Bosnia and Herzegovina would again be under investigation by the international community and international organizations.

According to media reports, Keskin was director of Una-Sana College in Bihac, which operates within the Richmond Park group seated in Sarajevo, as a legal successor to Bosna Sema educational institutions.

Following a request by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Service for Foreigners’ Affairs previously cancelled residence permits in Bosnia and Herzegovina for four Turkish citizens.

The procedure for withdrawal of residence permits for Turkish citizens was initiated following a visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina by president Erdogan on July 9 this year.

The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina took the position in previous cases that it was not possible to extradite Gulen followers whose extradition Turkey requests, because Bosnia and Herzegovina does not consider the organization a terrorist one – as BIRN BiH reported previously.

In its decision rejecting the Turkish request for extradition, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina called upon the fact that, although Ankara labels Fethullah Gulen’s movement a terrorist one, neither the European Union, the United Nations nor the majority of European countries do so.