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Safiye Alağaş.
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31-Dec-2019 10:35

Journalist Safiye Alağaş acquitted

The fourth hearing in the trial of Jin News news director Safiye Alağaş on the charges of “disseminating propaganda for a terrorist group,” “inciting the public to hatred and animosity” and “praising crime or a criminal” took place on 22 October 2019 at the 4th High Criminal Court of Diyarbakır. The trial was launched upon a complaint filed by the Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK).

Alağaş and her lawyer Pirozhan Karali were in attendance at the courtroom. Submitting their final opinion, the prosecutor asked the court to convict Alağaş of “disseminating propaganda for a terrorist organization” over news reports published on the website jinnews1.com.

Delivering her defense statement against the final opinion, Alağaş rejected the accusations and requested to be acquitted. Issuing its verdict at the end of the hearing, the court acquitted Alağaş of the charges against her, ruling that the elements of the alleged offense were not present.

5 February 2019:

JinNews news director Alağaş faces new indictment 
  The second hearing of a trial where journalist Safiye Alağaş, the news director of the women’s news collective JinNews, stands accused of “disseminating propaganda for a terrorist group” was held on 5 February. Alağaş did not attend the hearing at the 4th High Criminal Court of Diyarbakır, where she was represented by her lawyer Pirozhan Karali.
 
The chief judge of the court announced during the hearing that a newly drafted indictment by the Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office, dated 16 January, and also accusing Alağaş of “propaganda” on account of news stories covered by JinNews, was merged with the ongoing trial. Alağaş’s lawyer Karali requested that the court hear Alağaş’s defense statement again because of the merging of the files. The court agreed and adjourned the trial until 23 May. Source

11 December 2018:

14 July 2018:

JinNews director to stand trial on “propaganda” charge
 
Feminist news collective JinNews’ news director Safiye Alağaş will be standing trial on the charge of “conducting propaganda for a terrorist organization,” facing up to 5 years in prison.
 
The case was opened after Turkey’s Internet watchdog, Information and Communication Technologies Authority (BTK), filed a criminal complaint with the Diyarbakır Public Prosecutor’s Office alleging “propaganda” in dispatches by JinNews.
 
Several of the collective’s dispatches about Turkey’s military operation on Syria’s Afrin and several op/ed pieces featured on its website were cited among grounds for the accusations in the indictment.
 
The case will get underway on 11 December 2018 at the 4th High Criminal Court of Diyarbakır.*

4 March 2018:

Turkish authorities shut down all female news agency

A news website in the Turkey, repeatedly shut down by the authorities is refusing to give up the fight to publish, reports Malaysian newspaper “The Sun Daily”. Jin News Agency, which is staffed only by women, operates from the Kurdish city of Diyarbakır in Turkey’s south-east and focuses reporting on Kurdish and women’s issues.

It has been repeatedly shut down by Turkish authorities, who accuse the agency of "terror propaganda" for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). It website is currently blocked in Turkey.

Camerawoman Beritan Elyakut says the agency is unable to "reach the outside world", adding that the website has used six different domain names, "but closures continued uninterrupted". Its latest website domain, jinnews7.com, was blocked in Turkey on Feb 22.  While Jin News once had 60 journalists working for the agency across, this has now fallen to 25.

"Women are persecuted (in Turkey), and as a women's news agency we must show this," says Safiye Alagas, another photographer working at the agency, who also explains that the repeated shut downs are symptomatic of this. **

*Source: http://platform24.org/en

** https://ahvalnews.com/press-