Murat Arslan (born 1974) is a former Turkish judge active in the Judges and Prosecutors Union and

political prisoner A political prisoner is someone imprisoned for their political activity. The political offense is not always the official reason for the prisoner's detention. There is no internationally recognized legal definition of the concept, although n ...

Biography

He is married and father of two children. He graduated from the faculty of law of the Istanbul University in 1999. In 2001 he began to work at the court of accounts. He has been the chair of YARSAV from 16 March 2011 to 23 July 2016. YARSAV was closed by a decree published in the

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on the 23 July 2016. On 26 October 2016, he was arrested. On the 9 October 2017, he was awarded the

Václav Havel Human Rights Prize The Václav Havel Human Rights Prize is an annual €60,000 award which honours "outstanding" civil society action in defence of human rights, in Europe and beyond. Individuals, non-governmental organisations and institutions working to defend human ...

at the

Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) is the parliamentary arm of the Council of Europe, a 46-nation international organisation dedicated to upholding human rights, democracy and the rule of law. The Assembly is made up ...

. Th
announcement
of the Prize, which honours human rights defenders in Europe and beyond, cited his work to uphold the independence of the judiciary in Turkey. In January 2019, Arslan was sentenced to 10 years in prison for "participation to a terrorist organization". No violent action or call for violence was reported, the accusation being based on an anonymous denunciation and the presence of ByLock on his smartphone, an privacy application that Turkish prosecutors claim was widely used by members of the

Gülen movement The Gülen movement ( tr, Gülen hareketi), referred to by its participants as Hizmet ("service") or Cemaat ("community") and since 2016 by the Government of Turkey as FETÖ ("Fethullahist Terrorist Organisation" or, more commonly, "Fethullah T ...

. The trial was not fair according to the UN Special Rapporteur for the independence of judges and lawyers

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: “the conviction of Judge Arslan constitutes a severe and gross attack on the independence of the judiciary in Turkey, and in a democratic state under the rule of law an independent and impartial judiciary is a fundamental guarantee for society as a whole,” said the UN human rights expert.''Turkey must ensure fair appeal for Judge Murat Arslan after gross attack on judicial independence, says UN expert''
UN Human Rights, 6 February 2019.

References

1974 births Living people Turkish judges Istanbul University Faculty of Law alumni {{Turkey-law-bio-stub