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.