Jurists comment on 'Chaos Sledgehammer"™

Professor Vahit Bıçak: It is Chief Prosecutor"™s judicial discretion, there seems to be no fraction of rules
(Haber Türk, 6 Nisan 2010) Professor Vahit Bıçak: It is Chief Prosecutor"™s judicial discretion, there seems to be no fraction of rules We have to look at our structure of prosecution. It has its own establishment. While all state institutions are organized under a central hierarchy, prosecution has a decentralized composition. That means there is a separate prosecution establishment in each province. Each province has its own Chief Prosecutor and a certain number of prosecutors assigned in respect to the needs of the province. So the Chief Prosecutor is responsible with providing the service the provincial organization is expected to fulfill and is authorized to reassign the prosecutors in his provincial organization taking account of the requirements of the service or whether his written or verbal orders are followed or not. This is what happened in the mentioned [Sledgehammer case] probe. In this case there seems to be no fraction of rules in Istanbul Chief Prosecutor Engin"™s decisions. Taking prosecutors off the case is Engin"™s judicial discretion that he applied when a requirement occurred. He must have had legally valid grounds. The judicial discretion authority cannot be used arbitrarily. If there are suspicions on this, we have controlling mechanisms in judiciary organization.

Haberin Tarihi : 7.04.2010