With the new charges, the prosecution is requesting up to five years, nine months, a news report in the Vatan daily said. But this is still less than what Fevziye Cengiz, the woman who was assaulted at the police station, faces, which is up to six-and-a-half years in jail for “insulting and attacking police officers.”
Camera footage broadcast by Turkish media outlets last month of an İzmir police station revealed that police officers beat up 37-year-old Cengiz while her hands were cuffed behind her back. In the footage from the Karabağlar police station, plainclothes policemen are shown beating and slapping Cengiz, who was detained during a police raid on a music hall, for several minutes while she was restrained.
Cengiz was detained during a police raid while she was with her family at a music hall in July. The police demanded that everyone provide their identity cards. When Cengiz's husband went to their car to get her identification, the police reportedly hit her and then used expletives in reference to her. She was then arrested and taken to the police station, where she was beaten.
After Cengiz was released, she filed a complaint with the İzmir Chief State Prosecutor's Office. The officers then filed a separate complaint against her, accusing her of attacking and insulting them. The prosecutor then filed a lawsuit against the police officers on charges of causing simple injury, an offense that carries a sentence of up to one-and-a-half years in jail. Cengiz's lawyers objected to the decision and human rights groups have also heavily criticized it, saying the two men should face charges of torture and mistreatment.
Family and Social Policy Minister Fatma Şahin also said the police officers should be punished, calling the incident “unacceptable.” “If those who are supposed to help efforts for a solution [to the problem of violence against women] become part of the problem, this is definitely unacceptable,” Şahin said after the disclosure of the footage.
Vatan also reported that another police officer, seen closing the curtains to the room where Cengiz was being beaten, is also facing charges for aiding the other officers. The prosecutor also launched an investigation into three police IT department officers who examined the video footage and described the beating as a “scuffle” between the woman and police officers in their expert report to the prosecutor's office earlier.
The expert report was criticized in the media for editing the video footage in an attempt to make the incident look like a scuffle between the woman and the officers. The report said the two men tried to restrain Cengiz because she refused to calm down.
