ELCI AND OTHERS v. TURKEY JUDGMENT 4 14. He alleged that he was ill-treated by the Cizre police. He was stripped naked, insulted, threatened and beaten up. His testicles were squeezed and cold water was poured on him. This lasted about an hour. Then they took the applicant to the Cizre district gendarmerie command where he was kept, blindfolded, for a couple of days in a basement. Thereafter he was handed over to the Diyarbakır provincial gendarmerie command. 15. On 25 November 1993 the applicant's brothers were informed by the prosecuting authorities and a captain of the gendarmerie that he had been taken into detention on 24 November. 16. The applicant was detained in Diyarbakır incommunicado until his formal remand in custody on 10 December 1993. He alleged that during this first period of detention he was interrogated under torture concerning and because of applications he had filed on behalf of clients with the Commission. Correspondence and documentation relating to those applications were put to him by his interrogators. He was supposed to confess to having relations with the PKK and being a PKK courier. When he refused he was tortured. The interrogators assaulted and abused him, particularly concerning one of the cases he had taken to the Commission involving events at the Ormaniçi village. He was stripped and left naked. He was threatened with death should he pursue claims of village evacuations and disappearances. At one point he was taken to the countryside in a military vehicle and told that he was to be killed. However, he refused to sign any confession statement, even after being hosed down with cold water (as was Niyazi Çem) and having had his testicles squeezed. 17. In the gendarmerie command he was forced to lie on a concrete floor, blindfolded, being forbidden to speak to others or to stand up. Within a 24 hour period he received a stale slice of bread and was taken to the toilet twice. A request for other needs to be met was an excuse for further torture sessions. 18. He was brought before a Prosecutor on 10 December 1993, where charges based on the allegations of a certain Abdülhakim Güven, a PKK confessor benefiting from the Remorse Law, were put to him. It was incorrectly alleged that an illegal magazine and document had been found in his office. His brother, Ömer, who had also been present during the search and had counter-signed the search report, could confirm this error, as could his other brother, Mehmet, who had also been present during the search (see paragraph 480 below). A false search report (a faxed not an original copy) supplanted the genuine version in the domestic court file. 19. The applicant was remanded in custody by a judge from 10 December 1993 until 17 February 1994, when he was released after a hearing before the State Security Court. Despite repeated requests from his legal representatives, his case files and Commission correspondence were allegedly never returned to him. His legal practice was irreparably damaged