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Turkish journalist sentenced to 6 years, 3 months in prison over Gülen links

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Haşim Söylemez, a Turkish investigative journalist who was working for the now-closed Aksiyon magazine, was sentenced to six years, three months in prison by the İstanbul 26th High Criminal Court on charges of links to the Gülen movement, the Kronos news website reported.

Söylemez was arrested by a court immediately after a 2016 coup attempt as part of a post-coup crackdown targeting the Gülen movement and was later released pending trial for reasons of health.

The prosecutor also accused him of knowledge of the coup attempt beforehand. The evidence cited in the indictment was a tweet by Söylemez.

His lawyer applied to the regional appeals court after the lower court’s ruling.

Turkey has been the largest jailer of journalists in the world, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), for three years in a row, incarcerating nearly 200 reporters, media workers and columnists after the failed coup attempt in July 2016.

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