İsmail Çelik was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in jail for credit card fraud, but released when lawyers realized that the man they were looking for was in fact named İsmail Çevik, not Çelik. On July 7, police officers showed up at Çelik's home and, saying they were going to take him to the police station, took him to a court instead, which ordered that he be sent to prison. “Once they understood that they'd arrested me instead of İsmail Çevik, they let me go. But those 30 days in prison seemed like 30 years,” he said.
Newspapers reported that Çelik had been imprisoned in a case of mistaken identity, and his lawyer, Bahri Sert, opened a case for the trial to be reconsidered by the İzmir judiciary. Sert opened a case with the İzmir 7th High Criminal Court to request a revision of the İzmir 6th High Criminal Court's judgment imprisoning Çelik. “Even if justice came late, it did appear, in the form of the decision to release him,” Sert said. “Now, according to procedure, we're just waiting for the end of the trial in the 6th High Criminal Court.”
The story of Çelik, who lives in İstanbul's Yenibosna district and is a women's hair stylist, is like a movie. Çelik worked as a hair stylist for nine years in Azerbaijan. He was interrogated at the Ardahan Border Gate because of the possibility that he could be İsmail Çevik, who was wanted for being the head of a credit card fraud ring that 30 people were tried in connection with. Despite the fact that Çelik's last name is different and that the other information on his identification card indicated he was not the wanted man -- Çevik's father is listed as being named Ahmet and from Malatay, while Çelik's father is İbrahim of Bolu -- Çelik's name still got mixed up in the court case, and he was tried in absentia, later being jailed at Metris Prison on July 7.
İstanbul Bakırköy Public Prosecutor Ayhan Göçdekmerdan took statements from Çelik, his lawyer and relatives, and eventually the İzmir 7th High Criminal Court accepted Çelik's lawyer's appeal for a revision of judgment, ruling for the man's release.
Needless to say, Çelik's imprisonment was an unpleasant ordeal, and he says that it came at a particularly inconvenient time for him. Just days before his unexpected arrest he had all of his teethed pulled at a dentist and had made an appointment to have his one remaining tooth, which was broken, removed. “I was barely able to eat for that month in prison because I'd just had my teeth pulled. Whatever they gave me, I had to just swallow without chewing.” He explained that none of his fellow prisoners believed him when they all shared stories of why they were in jail and he claimed that he was innocent. Upon his release, Çelik didn't have any money to get home. “I didn't have a penny in my pocket when I got to the bus station. A police officer gave me TL 10, and I used that money to go home,” he said.
