Novelist’s trial has fitful start
Istanbul, Turkey The internationally publicized trial of this nation’s best-known novelist, Orhan Pamuk, on charges of insulting Turkey was suspended Friday in a tense first hearing marred by scuffles within and outside the Istanbul courtroom.
Many European Union observers who came to show support for Pamuk said they had expected the presiding judge to dismiss the case against the writer and end the damage it has caused to Turkey’s efforts to gain membership in the European Union.
Judge Metin Aydin agreed instead to the prosecution’s request that the trial be suspended until the Justice Ministry delivers an opinion on the case, which has been mired in legal ambiguities. The next hearing was set for Feb. 7.
Pamuk, 53, is facing as much as three years in prison if convicted of “public denigrations of Turkish identity.” The charge were triggered by an interview with a Swiss magazine in February in which he was quoted as saying: “30,000 Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in Turkey and no one dares talk about it.”
His comments referred both to the Turkish army’s brutal suppression of a Kurdish separatist rebellion in recent times and to the genocide campaign against Armenians perpetrated by Ottoman forces between 1915 and 1918.
Switzerland probing suspected CIA flights
Bern, Switzerland Switzerland has opened a criminal investigation into whether suspected CIA flights violated Swiss laws by carrying terror suspects through the country’s airspace, officials said Friday.
Mark Wiedmer, spokesman for the Federal Prosecutor’s Office, said the investigation was launched earlier this week, but that prosecutors “were aware of the difficulties” they will probably face in obtaining information from Washington.
“The investigation is in connection with the alleged CIA overflights,” Wiedmer told the Associated Press.
Last month, the Swiss Foreign Ministry said it had asked the United States about allegations that clandestine CIA planes carried terror suspects through its airspace, landing four times at Geneva’s airport.
A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in the Swiss capital, Bern, said a response was still pending.
According to the Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation, U.S.-registered planes suspected of being used by the CIA crossed Swiss airspace on at least 73 occasions since 2001.