[LINK] "Vice journalists jailed in Turkey on terror charges"

[rfmcdonald]

Al Jazeera America reports on the arrest of two Vice News journalists and their translator in Turkey.

Two British journalists working for Vice News and an Iraqi fixer were arrested in Turkey's southeastern city of Diyarbakir on Monday, accused of "engaging in terror activity" on behalf of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

The journalists were detained late last week while reporting from a city in Turkey's mostly Kurdish southeast. They were there to cover renewed fighting between the security forces and Kurdish rebels has killed scores of people.

A fourth suspect, their driver, was allowed to go free Monday.

The three have been taken to a jail in Diyarbakir ahead of an eventual trial. There were no further details over the evidence of their alleged links to ISIL.

The Toronto Star has more.

British journalists Jake Hanrahan and Philip Pendlebury and their Turkish translator were detained on Thursday while reporting from Diyarbakir, a city at the heart of deadly clashes between security forces and Kurdish rebels.

Kevin Sutcliffe, head of news programming in Europe, called the charges “baseless and alarmingly false.”
Hanrahan and Pendlebury were filming a documentary about police clashes with the pro-Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

A court official said the court in Diyarbakir ordered the three arrested on Monday. It wasn’t immediately clear which organization the journalists are accused of aiding.

“Today, the Turkish government has leveled baseless and alarmingly false charges of ‘working on behalf of a terrorist organization’ against three Vice News reporters, in an attempt to intimidate and censor their coverage,” Sutcliffe said in a statement published on Vice’s website on Monday.