2023-06-07 01:49:46
Jailed for simple graffiti. A 16-year-old boy was arrested and jailed in Turkey on Tuesday night for drawing a mustache on the president Recep Tayyip Erdogan on one of his campaign posters, the Turkish press reported.
According to several media close to the opposition, such as the daily BirGun, Cumhuriyet and the private television channel Halk TV, the high school student from Mersin, on the south-eastern coast of the country, was accused of having “drawn with a ballpoint pen a Hitler mustache and wrote insulting comments” on a poster of the head of state, pasted near his home.
Charged with “insulting the president”
Identified thanks to surveillance cameras, according to the press, he was arrested at the family home and questioned by the juvenile brigade where “he admitted having drawn the mustache but denied the comments” which accompanied him. Brought before the prosecutor, he was immediately charged with “insulting the president” and imprisoned in the center for minors in the prison of Tarsus, near Mersin, specifies Halk TV.
“Insulting the president” is one of the most frequent charges in Turkey where it was pronounced 16,753 times in 2022, according to statistics from the Ministry of Justice.
In power for twenty years, Recep Tayyip Erdogan was renewed on May 28 with 52% of the votes in the second round of the presidential election for a new five-year presidential term.
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