Prisoner's death stirs tension with Belgium

Mikail Tekin (31) died in Belgium's Jamioulx Prison last week. Prison authorities initially said he choked while eating but an autopsy report later listed the cause of death as “physical violence.” Other prisoners claimed that he was subjected to torture while being transported to an isolation cell. Tekin had originally been detained after a quarrel involving traffic police.

 Prosecutors stated that the autopsy revealed marks of violence on Tekin's body and detained three guards. Guards at Jamioulx Prison went on strike after their three co-workers were detained. The strike ended after prosecutors said no legal action was being pursued against the three guards. The investigation into the case, however, is continuing, prosecutors said.

The apparent absence of legal action against the guards prompted the Turkish Foreign Ministry to step in on the issue. On Thursday, Turkish officials in Ankara and Brussels handed over separate notes of diplomatic protest to their Belgian counterparts, while on the same day Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu initiated a telephone conversation with his Belgian counterpart, Yves Leterme.

Davutoğlu told Leterme that Turkey expects his utmost care in the investigation of Tekin's death, while urging a rapid finalization of the investigation in a way that would be satisfactory for all parties involved.

In Belgium, Charleroi public prosecutor Christian De Valkeneer was quoted as saying: “An autopsy showed that the death was as a result of intervention from prison guards. It remains to be seen whether the force used was proportional.”

The dead man's body was flown to Turkey on Wednesday for burial in the Central Anatolian province of Sivas, where he was born. Tekin's funeral was held in Sivas on Thursday following a second autopsy carried out at a university hospital in the city. The result of the second autopsy will become clear after a final report by the Council of Forensic Medicine (ATK) in İstanbul, to which samples from the body were sent from the university hospital in Sivas.

Speaking with NTV news channel on Thursday evening, Rüştü Tekin, Mikail Tekin's uncle, said that his nephew suffered from mental illness, reiterating that they were told by witnesses that Mikail Tekin was beaten by guards.

Zafer Üskül, head of Parliament's Human Rights Commission, who earlier this week sent a letter to the head of the Justice Commission of the Belgian parliament via the Foreign Ministry demanding an explanation of charges that Tekin had died of torture at the hands of prison guards, also spoke to NTV following remarks delivered by Tekin's uncle.

Üskül said that he had only known that Mikail Tekin suffered from asthma earlier.

“He should not have been sent to prison at all if he had a mental illness. If there is such a thing, it is basically inculpability. The possibility of xenophobia should also be investigated,” Üskül said, while voicing uneasiness with the fact that human rights organizations showed no reaction at all against the conditions under which Temin's death occurred.

“The death itself is extremely saddening, and there is a serious responsibility belonging to the Belgian state, since persons in prisons or under custody are entrusted to the state. If they suggest that it is a normal death, then it is again the Belgian state's job to prove this normality. Nobody should forget that the family of the victim is not in a position to prove that there was torture,” he continued, while describing the lack of legal action against the three guards as “unacceptable.”

In May, a report by the Council of Europe's European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) said that the activities of neo-Nazi groups in Belgium were contributing to a climate of xenophobia, leading to a “persistence of incidents of racist violence.”

“Steps have been taken to improve the content and the implementation of legislation to combat racial discrimination and racism. However, cases of racial discrimination, particularly against non-citizens, persons of immigrant background and Muslims still occur in fields such as access to employment, education and housing. The persistence of racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and xenophobic discourse by some politicians and on the Internet is worrying,” the ECRI said then, highlighting racist attacks by Hans Van Themsche, who shot dead a 2-year-old child and her Malian nanny in October 2007 and who attempted to kill a Turkish woman in Antwerp in 2006.