On 3 August Hamza Yalçin, a Turkish-Swedish journalist and writer, was arrested in Barcelona on the basis of an Interpol arrest warrant as he was about to board a plane to London. The Audiencia Nacional then ordered him to be remanded in custody without bail.
This journalist, political dissident and critic of the Erdogan regime is accused in Turkey of terrorism because of his monthly publications in the Turkish magazine ‘Odak’. Hamza Yalçin has not lived in Turkey for almost 20 years.
Finally, last Thursday, 29 September, after 56 days in Brians I prison in Barcelona (a period that exceeds the maximum of 40 days established by the European Convention), the Council of Ministers rejected his extradition to Turkey, leaving him at liberty.
A similar case was that of his compatriot, the Turkish-German journalist Dogan Akhanli, who was arrested in Granada on 19 August in connection with his alleged membership of a terrorist organisation. This took place on the basis of an international arrest warrant issued by President Erdogan’s executive, despite the fact that he had already been acquitted for the same act in 2011. In this case, the judge of the Audiencia Nacional ordered his release at the end of August.
In both cases, Turkey demanded the extradition of these journalists critical of the Erdogan regime to face trial in Turkey, despite the fact that both have been in exile for more than fifteen years.
The international wanted notices issued by Interpol, known as ‘Interpol Red Alerts’, which Interpol issues to police in all countries, have generated controversy. This is due to the differences in the application of these warnings between countries, as it has not yet been possible to unify and establish standardised criteria for the interpretation and application of these warnings.
The authorities of the different countries can always assess the red notices issued by Interpol and decide what value they attach to them depending on the country from which the orders originate and on the specific case and whether or not to execute them. These two journalists of Turkish origin had recently travelled to several countries in the Schengen area, including Italy and Greece, without being arrested by the police in any of these countries, but the Spanish police did so by automatically applying the red alerts issued by Interpol (on the basis of the application of the extradition agreement between Turkey and Spain), without taking into account the circumstances in which Turkey has issued an arrest warrant, in the midst of a campaign of persecution of political dissidents.
This disparity of criteria between the authorities of the different European countries generates a situation of legal inequality within the European Union.
