Turkish Reporter in Spy Trial Fined for 'Insulting' Erdogan
Can Dundar, editor-in-chief of Turkey's leading opposition daily Cumhuriyet, was fined nearly 9,000 euros Monday for "insulting" President Recep Tayyip Erdogan when he was prime minister.
Dundar, who is currently standing trial along with his Ankara bureau chief on allegations of espionage, said on Twitter that the court-ordered fine would not stop him reporting.
"If revealing the truth is a crime, we will keep on committing it," he tweeted.
The court in Istanbul slapped him with the fine of 28,650 Turkish liras (8,942 euros) after finding him guilty of insulting Erdogan, his son Bilal and seven others in the paper's coverage of a December 2013 corruption scandal.
Dundar's lawyer said they would appeal the ruling.
Reporters Without Borders offered support to Dundar, tweeting in Turkish that the articles written were "not a crime".
Prosecutors had sought up to nine years and four months of jail time for two columns and a series of articles on a corruption controversy that broke while Erdogan was prime minister, and which posed one of the biggest threats of his rule.
Erdogan denounced the scandal, which centered on the illicit trading of gold with Iran, as a plot by his arch-foe, the U.S.-based Muslim preacher Fethullah Gulen, to bring down his government.
Dundar and Erdem Gul, his Ankara bureau chief, have become the symbol of a battle in Turkey over freedom of the press.
They have remained defiant in the face of a high-profile trial for allegedly revealing state secrets in a story accusing the government of seeking to illicitly deliver arms to rebels in Syria. The pair risk life in prison if convicted.
The prosecution has sparked outrage among opposition and rights groups in Turkey as well as in the West, where it is seen as proof of Erdogan's determination to silence his opponents.
Almost 2,000 people have been prosecuted for "insulting" him since the former premier became president in August 2014, Turkey's justice minister said in March.
Source: Agence France Presse
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