ANKARA - Ten policemen whose imprisonment were upheld in the case of torture of youngsters from Manisa province requested the correction of the verdict on Tuesday.
Levent Ozvez, one of the policemen who submitted their petitions for correction of the verdict to the Supreme Court of Appeals Chief Prosecutor's Office, told reporters that there were many deficiencies in the verdict and claimed that some evidence was lost in the case.
Ozvez claimed that the official report of the expert which was taken in the end of the comparison of the letter of the intervenor stating that he was not tortured and his statement during his testimony was taken out of the file.
Some of the suspects were deprived of the right to defend themselves, Ozvez alleged.
Ozvez said, ''it is not certain by whom the 27 documents in the appeals petition made to the reasoned verdict were taken out of the file.''
In case their request for correction of verdict was not accepted, internal law methods would be exhausted, Ozvez noted.
Ozvez stated that they would then apply to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR).
Levent Ozvez distributed the report of the experts which compared the statement of intervenor Munire Apaydin that she was not tortured with the petition she wrote again during her testimony.
The request will be examined by the Supreme Court of Appeals Chief Prosecutor's Office.
If the prosecutor's office regards the request appropriate, it will send the file to the Supreme Court of Appeals Eighth Criminal Department which upheld the verdict of the local court.
But, the chief prosecutor's office does not seem likely to accept the request.
The Supreme Court of Appeals Eighth Criminal Department upheld the verdict of the court to sentence ten policemen to imprisonment terms ranging between 60 to 130 months on charges of torturing 14 youngsters in Manisa.
(BRC-AÖ) 08.04.2003