Mehmet Şen
person- Image

- Sex
- Male
- Civil status
- Married
- Date body found
- Mar 30, 1994
- Occupation
- Craftsman
- Politician
- Event description
Per AİHM case file, forty-nine-year-old Mehmet Şen was born in Urfa, Birecik’s Ayran village. He worked for the DEP political party in Antep’s Nizip county. He was a candidate in the 1994 mayoral election for his districtHowever, he received many threats pressuring him to withdraw his candidacy, which he eventually did . The day before the election, on 26th March 1994, he was taken from his coffeehouse by four men in civilian clothes carrying walkie-talkies, who introduced themselves as police officers. When the witnesses informed his wife, she applied to police stations and the police headquarters in Urfa and Antep, to no avail. On 30th March 1994, an unknown person calling the DEP political party and the Gündem newspaper told them that his dead body was in a hospital in Antep. His body bore signs of torture; all his fingers were broken and he was shot in the head.
Mehmet Şen’s wife applied to the European Court of Human Rights on 4th April 1994. On June 30 2004, the Court decided that Turkey had violated articles 2 (right to life) and 13 (right to effective remedy) of the European Convention on Human Rights and asked that the government pay compensation to the family.
As of 2014, the case is being investigated by the Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office.
- Geolocation
Latitude: 37.009926
Longitude: 37.796949
- Geolocation
- City
- Gaziantep
- District
- Nizip
- Date of disappearance
- Mar 26, 1994
- Year of disappearance
- 1994
- Age at the time of disappearance
- Yaş:49
- Status of the victim
- Discovered dead and returned to the family
- Type of source material
- ECHR decision
- Press release or report of human rights organisations
- Printed or online news
- Decision by the prosecution office
- Unknown
- Verdict of ECHR
- Violation of the right(s)
- Articles violated according to ECHR verdict
- Article 13: Right to an effective remedy
- Article 2: Procedural violation of the right to life
- Summary of the legal proceedings
Per AİHM case file, Mehmet Şen’s wife applied to the European Court of Human Rights on 4th April 1994. On June 30 2004, the Court decided that Turkey had violated articles 2 (right to life) and 13 (right to effective remedy) of the European Convention on Human Rights and asked that the government pay compensation to the family.
After mediatized statements of an ex-PKK member-turned-JİTEM employee on Mehmet Şen’s murder by JİTEM, the Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office included Mehmet Şen among the 26 victims murdered by JİTEM in the investigation that it launched in 2006. However, due to indecision on jurisdiction between civil and military courts, the case has been transferred back and forth multiple times with no development thus far. As of 2014, the case is being investigated by the Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office.