Turkey has arrested 62 children and accused them of treason after the botched military coup last week. The youngsters, aged 14 to 17, were from Kuleli Military school, the oldest of its kind in Istanbul. They have reportedly been thrown in jail and are not allowed to speak to their parents.
Their families say that just before the coup the children were invited to a school cocktail party but were made to parade with guns, dress in army uniforms and guard their campus.
The mother of an arrested 15-year-old boy was desperately waiting for news outside Istanbul’s Maltepe Prison.
‘Our child has never held a gun before,’ she told the Telegraph.
‘They were used, they were forced to do this.’
Families fear their children will be denied fair trial and say they only had two minutes to testify at a preliminary hearing in a packed courthouse which their parents were not allowed to enter.
Another distraught mother added: ‘They are just children. They are innocent. The state needs to separate the guilty ones from the innocent ones.’
One lawyer representing three of the students told the Telegraph: ‘Some families haven’t heard anything from their children for seven days – children at the age of 14 or 15. That’s not something that should be happening even in a state of emergency.’
Turkish authorities have also issued warrants for the detention of 42 journalists, private broadcaster NTV reported.
Well known commentator and former parliamentarian Nazli Ilicak was among those for whom a warrant was issued.
Turkish authorities have suspended, detained or placed under investigation more than 60,000 soldiers, police, judges, teachers, civil servants and others in the days following the attempted coup.
The news come as it emerges that plotters are being tortured, beaten, raped and denied food and water according to Amnesty International.
The human rights group said today it had ‘credible evidence’ of the abuse and torture of people detained in sweeping arrests since the coup on July 15.
The London-based group claimed some of those being held were being ‘subjected to beatings and torture, including rape, in official and unofficial detention centres in the country’.
