ELCI AND OTHERS v. TURKEY JUDGMENT 9 with the permission of the Chief Public Prosecutor of the State Security Court. 43. Mr Çem was taken to the police station of the Gayrettepe 1 Division. His house was searched, but nothing was seized. His bag was searched and in the evening he was thrown into a cell. 44. On 26 November 1993 he was transferred to the Bursa Osmangazi Detention Centre and returned to the Gayrettepe premises on the evening of the following day. On 28 November 1993 the applicant and a suspect from Bursa were taken by air to Diyarbakır and the premises of the JITEM at the Diyarbakır provincial gendarmerie command. 45. For the first two days Mr Çem was not interrogated. Interrogation began on 1 December 1993 at around 11.30 p.m. Three more blindfolds were wrapped over his eyes. The applicant was accused of having accompanied a certain Riza Altun, a PKK protector, by plane, to İstanbul and of having sent him to join the PKK, of acting as a PKK courier between prisons, of organising PKK relations between İstanbul and Europe, and of having contacts with the political branch of the PKK, as well as with the Özgür Gündem and Özgür Halk newspapers. The applicant denied any relations with the PKK, other than with certain clients whom he had defended before the State Security Court. He was then sworn at, hit and his hair was pulled. Abdülhakim Güven was brought in and accused the applicant of being a prison courier. The applicant replied that Mr Güven was inventing such accusations in order to benefit from the Remorse Law, and he explained his position regarding prison visits to his clients. On one such occasion he had met Mr Güven. The next day he was again interrogated with the same accusations being made, which he continued to deny. 46. The applicant stated that throughout the 18 days of his detention (17 days according to official records), he was beaten, threatened, abused, insulted, forced to listen to loud music and to sleep on a cold, concrete floor, whilst being blindfolded all the time. He was given a half a loaf of bread once and taken to the toilet twice each day. There were blankets on the stone, corridor floor - two for three people. The detainees put one on the floor and covered themselves with the other. 47. He alleged that he was stripped naked, together with Tahir Elçi, and hosed down with pressurised cold water in the toilet on 9 December 1993 as he had refused to sign statements, the contents of which were not disclosed to him. The cold water torture only ceased when he began bashing his own head against the wall as he could not bear it any more. Tahir Elçi, Meral Daniş Beştaş and Hüsniye Ölmez suffered the same treatment. Everyone in the place heard the screams of Hüsniye Ölmez. 48. During the evening of 8 December 1993, the interrogators tried to make him sign a statement they had prepared without allowing him to read it first. As he refused, he was beaten. On 9 December 1993 he was again