Cumhuriyet trial resumes in Istanbul

The trial of 20 executives and journalists from daily Cumhuriyet, including the newspaper's editor-in-chief Murat Sabuncu, reporter Ahmet Şık, columnist Kadri Gürsel and cartoonist Musa Kart, will resume on Sept. 25 at Istanbul's Çağlayan courthouse.  

At the last hearing on Sept. 11, the court in its interlocutory ruling ordered the continuation of arrest of the Sabuncu, Şık, Gürsel, Akın Atalay, Ahmet Kemal Aydoğdu, and Yusuf Emre İper, until more evidence was presented.

All defendants in the case, which has been crticicized by domestic and international media freedom groups, are being tried on terror charges.

The decision on Gürsel was taken with a majority of judges' votes, while the ruling for the other five arrested journalists was taken unanimously. One of the judges had expressed his opinion in favor of the release of Gürsel.

"The court has decided to keep them arrested until more witnesses are heard," chief judge Abdurrahman Orkun Dağ had said after a 13-hour session at the court near Istanbul's Silivri Prison.

In the Sept. 11 hearing, the defendants in the case once again rejected the accusations, which include "being a member of terror organization" and of having links to the network of U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen, widely believed to have masterminded the failed July 2016 coup attempt.