THRONGS of relatives and lawyers pushed their way past a metal barrier manned by security guards, fighting for a spot in the crowded courtroom. The area where the accused sat was crowded, too. The 17 journalists whose trial began on July 24th were the core of the editorial staff of Cumhuriyet, Turkey's oldest newspaper and one of the few media outlets that has refused to play by the rules of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the country's autocratic president. In a case widely considered a perversion of justice even by Turkish standards, they face prison terms of up to 43 years for "assisting an armed terrorist organisation". For one of the accused, Ahmet Sik (pictured on poster), this is far from his first trial. Mr Sik has been a thorn in the side of the state for decades. In the 1990s he investigated disappearances in the Kurdish south-east, torture in prisons and killings of journalists (including that of a friend, Metin Goktepe, by police officers). He was prosecuted for defaming the military, the government and individual politicians. In the 2000s he was one of the first to document the penetration of Turkey's security forces by an Islamist brotherhood known as the Gulen movement. When he tried to publish his findings in 2011, police seized copies of his book; prosecutors linked to the Gulenists had him thrown in prison. He stayed there for over a year.
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