Upon the investigation of Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office a lawsuit is filed against İbrahim Aydın, Barış İnce, Can Uğur and Bülent Yılmaz, who were executives of BirGün newspaper, on the grounds that they had responsibilities on reporting the information shared from the twitter account named “Fuat Avni” in 2014-2015 with the claim of aiding FETÖ without being its member. (30 August)
Istanbul 32nd High Criminal Court held the first hearing of the trial on November 26. At the hearing on March 5, 2020, court decided to merge the file against Barış İnce for allegedly “being a member of a terrorist organization” in relation to the posts of “Kaç Saat Oldu?” twitter account. The next hearing will be held on April 14.
At the fourth hearing of the case on 30 June, the prosecution requested that the missing issues be rectified. It was stated that a person using the account “Kaç Saat Oldu?” was caught within the scope of the operation carried out in Antep, and it was stated that Barış İnce cannot be associated with this account. The court ruled that, if the requested documents came between the session, if any, requests for the extension of prosecution should be notified or the case file be sent to the prosecution for the preparation of the opinion on the merits. The next hearing will be held on October 13 (30 June).
At the hearing held on October 13, 2020, the prosecutor of the hearing announced the opinion as to the accusations following the examination of the file and demanded the acquittal of the journalists on the grounds that the elements of the offense charged did not arise. Handing down its judgement, the court board has ruled for the acquittal of the journalists (October 13).
