ELCI AND OTHERS v. TURKEY JUDGMENT 36 never filed a petition for a client with the European Commission of Human Rights. 13. Arif Altinkalem 240. Mr Altinkalem was born in 1965 and was a practising lawyer in Diyarbakır at the material time. 241. He gave a similar account of his detention on 16 November 1993 as Mr Demırham (paragraph 236 above). 242. In the Diyarbakır provincial gendarmerie command he was made to crouch down, face to the wall, in a corridor. After an hour or two he was put in a cell. He did not know if he had been detained by the JITEM or the antiterror department of the police. He was not told of the reasons for his detention even when he asked for explanations. 243. He was not taken for interrogation for one or two days. When he was interrogated, he was questioned about the cases he had defended before the State Security Court and asked if he had been paid. The implication was that there was a link between his cases and the PKK. He was accused of assisting PKK detainees by acting as a courier and not charging fees for his work. He was told that the PKK confessor, Abdülhakim Güven, had made certain allegations about him and other local lawyers. Mr Güven had been the prisoners' representative and attended the consultations he had had with his clients at the Diyarbakır E-Type prison. 244. He was confronted with someone purporting to be Mr Güven, but did not recognise him due to the blindfold. Mr Güven implied that the applicant's legal work made him a possible PKK sympathiser but no specific allegation was formulated. r Güven acknowledged that he had not given the applicant any notes to pass on as a courier. 245. He signed various statements. Being under physical and psychological duress, he was unaware of the contents of the statements except for a report which was headed “ERNK Receipt”, being evidence of financial assistance to the PKK, which document he had never possessed. 246. A medical certificate dated 10 December 1993 recorded that he bore marks of blows and violence on his body. He saw the doctor before being brought before the State Security Court and released. Once formally released, he and his colleagues were subjected to a warning speech by a gendarme. 247. The applicant discovered later that his name had never been mentioned in any of Mr Güven's earlier statements to the police. Afterwards he thought that he must have been detained because of his membership of the Human Rights Association and his assistance in preparing cases to the European Commission of Human Rights. 248. He stayed out of Diyarbakır for the next few months as there was an in absentia arrest warrant issued against him.