Kenan Bilgin
person- Image
- Sex
- Male
- Civil status
- Single
- Occupation
- Workers
- Event description
Per European Court of Human Rights case file, Kenan Bilgin was taken into custody by plain-clothes policemen on 12 September 1994 while he was waiting at a bus stop in Ankara’s Dikmen neighborhood. An unknown person called his brother İrfan three times and told him that Kenan was being kept in Gölbaşı along with three other men and was being severely tortured. During a last call in November he told İrfan that Kenan was being transferred elsewhere.
Even though Kenan Bilgin’s family found ten witnesses, their efforts to find him did not produce any results; authorities denied placing him under custody. In 2001, the ECHR ruled that the articles 2 (right to life), 5 (right to liberty and security) and 13 (effective remedy) of the Convention had been violated and Turkey should pay pecuniary damages to the family.
Kenan Bilgin’s body has not been discovered, thus far.
- Geolocation
Latitude: 39.93336349999999
Longitude: 32.8597419
- Geolocation
- City
- Ankara
- Date of disappearance
- Sep 12, 1994
- Year of disappearance
- 1994
- Age at the time of disappearance
- Yaş:38
- Status of the victim
- Still missing
- Type of source material
- ECHR decision
- Press release or report of human rights organisations
- Printed or online news
- Witness testimony
- Decision by the prosecution office
- Decision of non-prosecution due to statute of limitations
- 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
- Article 2: Substantive violation of the right to life
- Article 5: Right to liberty and security
- Summary of the legal proceedings
Per European Court of Human Rights case file, after the phone calls that Kenan Bilgin’s brother received from an unknown person claiming that he was under torture in Gölbaşı,the family apllied to the Human Right’s Commission of the Grand National Assembly, to the State Security Court Prosecutor and then to the Istanbul Governorate with the assistance of the Human Rights Association.
Despite testimony from ten individuals who had either seen Kenan Bilgin under torture while in custody at Ankara Police Headquarters or had been threatened by officers with meeting the same grim end as him, during court hearings at the State Security Court, the Ankara Police Directorate denied that they knew where he was. Finally, the family applied to the European Court of Human Rights on 17th October 1994 which heard all the witnesses that the family mentioned. The Court decided on 17th October 2001 that Turkey had violated articles 2 (right to life), 5 (right to liberty and security and 13 (right to effective remedy) of the European Convention on Human Rights and was thus required to pay compensation to the family.
In 2017, the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office dismissed the case due to lack of evidence and statute of limitations; the family appealed the decision on 15th May 2017.
Kenan Bilgin’s body has not been found so far.