A Turkish judge has ordered the release on bail of eight human rights activists including a senior official from Amnesty International, who were standing trial on terrorism-related charges.

Senior Amnesty figures among 11 on trial in Turkey on terror charges Read more

The decision was made after a marathon 12-hour hearing in the Çağlayan court, Istanbul, in the opening session of a trial that had been condemned by rights campaigners as politically motivated and an attempt to crush dissent.

The decision means that 10 out of the 11 human rights activists who were detained in the case, including Amnesty’s Turkey director, İdil Eser, will be immediately released on bail. Taner Kılıç, Amnesty’s Turkey chairman, will remain in detention as he is on trial in a separate case in the city of İzmir.

Fotis Filippou (@Fotis_Filippou) Amazing news: #Istanbul10, including @amnesty's Idil Eser, released from detention#FreeRightsDefenders pic.twitter.com/8cnsrzTiVv

Amnesty International’s secretary general, Salil Shetty, said in a statement: “Today, finally, we celebrate that our friends and colleagues can go back with their loved ones and can sleep in their own beds for the first time in almost four months.

“But any joy is tainted by the ongoing detention of Amnesty International’s chair, Taner Kılıç, whose separate trial is due to start tomorrow. These politically motivated prosecutions are an attempt to silence critical voices within Turkey but have only served to highlight the importance of human rights and those who dedicate their lives to defending them.

“Tonight we take a brief moment to celebrate but tomorrow we will continue our struggle to ensure that Taner, İdil and their colleagues are acquitted of these baseless charges. We will not stop until the charges are dropped and all of them are free.”

The trial was seen as a an important test of the Turkish judicial system in one of the most high-profile cases since last year’s coup attempt threw the country into turmoil and led to the dismissals and detentions of tens of thousands of people accused of links to Fethullah Gülen, an exiled preacher based in the US whose movement is widely believed to have orchestrated the putsch.



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It will come as a welcome surprise to human rights activists who had despaired at the Turkish authorities’ increasing attacks on human rights and the detentions of activists and journalists in Turkey over the past year.

But optimism will be tempered by the fact that the charges in this case have not been dropped and more journalists and activists have have been detained in recent days and weeks.

The campaigners released on Wednesday were accused of plotting an uprising and charged with aiding militants as well as the Gülen movement. They face up to 15 years in prison if found guilty.

They were arrested during a workshop on digital security on the resort island of Büyükada off the coast of Istanbul and held in detention for months.

Prosecuting authorities claim it was a secret meeting to organise an uprising or even to conduct espionage. Most of the 10 Amnesty supporters at the meeting have been held in jail since their arrest on 18 July.

Kılıç did not attend the workshop because he was in prison after being arrested the previous month but he is accused of knowing it was happening. In a separate case he is accused of downloading the ByLock app, a secure messaging platform that was allegedly used by members of the Gülen movement until the beginning of 2016, after it was penetrated by the Turkish intelligence service. Amnesty says a forensic examination of his phone showed no evidence of it having been downloaded.

The hearing on Wednesday began with a reading of the indictment and statements by the defendants, who argued that there was no evidence linking them to terrorist groups. In a twist, the prosecutor in the case recommended the release on bail of all but one of the defendants.

Dozens of people protested outside the crowded courthouse in Istanbul’s judicial palace as the trial opened, holding banners bearing images of the activists and the hashtag #FreeRightsDefenders.

“I have dedicated my life to truth and justice and that is all I ask of this court,” said Özlem Dalkıran, a pro-democracy campaigner and one of the defendants, during opening statements to the court.