NETHERLANDS/TURKEY: Case reveals tampering with intercepted evidence
01 May 2002
Hüseyin Baybasin was arrested in Lieshout, Holland on 27 March 1998. He was charged with membership of a criminal organisation and conspiracy to murder, hostage taking and attempted murder in connection with the heroin trade. On 10 February 2001, he was convicted and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in the special security prison at Vught, by the court in Breda. During the course of his trial Baybasin, who is Kurdish, made serious allegations about contacts between the Turkish authorities and drug traffickers and argued that there had been interference with taped telephone conversations used during the trial. Baybasin has launched an appeal against his conviction after new evidence, alleging wilful tampering with intercepted material and threats by the Turkish authorities, were raised by the defence.
In 2000, the Turkish author Mahmut Baksi wrote a book, based on the recollections of Baybasin, A Kurdish businessman: Hüseyin Baybasin, which investigates the narcotics trade in Turkey. The Turkish public prosecutor demanded that the publisher, Ahmet Onal of Peri Publishing, be jailed for up to 27 years; in September 2001, he was fined approximately 3,000 Euro (1.9 billion TL) instead. Baybasin accuses important Turkish politicians, such as former Prime Minister Cilles, of being linked to the drugs trade. Baybasin, who became wealthy smuggling tobacco, marijuana, heroin and other drugs in the 1970s and 1980s, would have been in a position to know this.
Baybasin was first arrested for his part in drugs trafficking in the "Lucky-S" case in 1996 and jailed for one and a half years. He claims that he has information on drug-money bank accounts of many well known Turkish personalities. He also claims that the drugs recovered by the police aboard the "Lucky-S" later reappeared on the drugs market.
The book outlines the relations between Turkish politicians and the drugs trade. In one instance, following a car crash near Susurluk in Turkey, in which three people died, those in the car were identified as Abdullah Çatli (a former leader of the MHP, an extreme right wing party in Turkey), a drug trafficker (with an outstanding international warrant), Hüseyin Kocadag (second in charge of the Istanbul police force and later director of the police academy) and Sedat Bucak (connected to the Turkish intelligence service). The contact between drug dealers, politicians and policemen raised questions in the media and in parliament.
Baybasin says that after his 1996 imprisonment, he wanted to get out of the drugs trade, but that he was threatened on several occasions by figures connected to the Turkish state. He says that he became involved in the Kurdish solidarity movement and even helped to finance the Kurdish Parliament in Exile in The Hague. Due to his position on the Kurdish question, as well as the allegations against Turkish politicians, he claims that the Turkish state wants to eliminate or jail him. His accusations are supported by “HT” a former member of the Turkish intelligence services, who maintains that Turkey sent a death squad to Holland to assassinate him. The Dutch Supreme Court gave credibility to "HT's" claims by refusing to grant Turkey an extradition order on the grounds that there were "serious suspicions" that Baybasin would be killed. The integrity of the trial has also been questioned because of evidence from an individual that even the Criminal Intelligence Service (CID) describes as biased. “MB”, who was presented as a crown witness, later disappeared.
Two weeks before Baybasin was convicted, the defence stopped work. They claimed that the trial was flawed after their request for an investigation into the use of tapped telephone conversations was denied. His appeal has now reached the Supreme Court in Amsterdam where the defence has asked the judges to challenge the Penal Code Chamber's ruling on the grounds that the public prosecutor used fabricated recordings of tapped phone conversations.
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