Ankara (AFP)
Renowned journalist Ahmet Altan was arrested again Tuesday after a Turkish court ruling, a week after he was released from prison for alleged involvement in the failed 2016 coup, police said.
Altan was arrested at his home in Istanbul a few hours after the court decision, Istanbul police said.
Journalists and writers Ahmet Altan, 69, and Nazli Ilicak, 74, were released on 4 November after three years in prison.
The two intellectuals were sentenced on the same day respectively to 10 years and a half and nearly nine years in prison for "helping a terrorist group", but the judiciary ordered their release under judicial supervision because of the time already spent behind bars.
They had also been forbidden to leave the country.
But an arrest warrant was issued Tuesday against Mr. Altan after a call from the Attorney General against the decision to release the journalist, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
The latter is suspected of being linked to the movement of an Islamic preacher, Fethullah Gülen, whom Ankara accuses of hatching the coup attempt of July 2016 - something that Mr Gülen denies.
Amnesty International has denounced a "scandalous" arrest. "It is impossible not to see in this decision anything other than a punishment" against a man "determined not to be gagged," said Amnesty Director for Europe Marie Struthers, denouncing "an additional injustice "against the journalist.
For NGOs, the Altan-Ilicak affair is emblematic of the deterioration of human rights in Turkey after the failed coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who launched massive purges that hit media and intellectual circles hard.
Altan was initially sentenced to life imprisonment last year, like Ms. Ilicak, but a court of appeals overturned the verdict in July and ordered a new trial.
© 2019 AFP