ELCI AND OTHERS v. TURKEY JUDGMENT 21 3. Arzu Şahin 114. Mrs Şahin was born in 1961 and was a practising lawyer in İstanbul at the material time. 115. On 7 December 1993 she had been at home when her husband telephoned around 10 a.m. to say that he had been taken into custody and that she should wait for him to be brought home by the police. 116. Four police officers and her husband arrived between 11-11.30 a.m. and she was told that she was also to be taken into custody. A search of about 40 to 45 minutes was made of the house and a report drawn up which they did not sign there. Nothing was seized. She asked a neighbour to look after their two children, as she was expecting to be away for several days. Mr and Mrs Şahin were taken to the First Branch of the İstanbul Police Headquarters, without being told of the reasons for their detention, other than a reference to unspecified instructions from Diyarbakır. 117. Around 4 a.m. on 11 December she and her husband were handed over to two plain-clothed officials from Diyarbakır, to where they flew at around 7 a.m. They were taken, head-covered, to a place called the JITEM at the Diyarbakır provincial gendarmerie command, according to the officials there. She claimed that the JITEM had no legal status. 118. In Diyarbakır they were not informed of what they were accused. The questions put to them were unrelated to any possible criminal offence. She was asked about her work for newspaper publishers whose editions included “Özgür Gündem”, a purportedly separatist newspaper. She was asked why she had married a Kurd and why she defended dissidents. She was told that she was a traitor and a separatist. No mention was made of European complaints. 119. It was only before the Public Prosecutor of the State Security Court, to whom she was presented on 21 or 22 December 1993, that she heard that Abdülhakim Güven had made specific allegations against her. She had not been confronted with him, as far as she was aware, being blindfolded throughout. The Prosecutor said that Mr Güven accused her of acting as a PKK courier, serving as a PKK lawyer for the newspaper, being financed by them and the like. It was true that she had signed a confrontation document concerning Mr Güven, but this was at the end of the alleged torture period when she was disoriented, intimidated and tricked into signing a document, the contents of which she had been unable to verify due to the blindfold. 120. The indictment dated 22 December 1993 concerning her and other detainees was not shown to her until 20 to 25 days after its issue, by her lawyers, when she was on remand at the Diyarbakır central maximum security prison. 121. The indictment mentioned that Mrs Şahin had drawn up documents which had been faxed to human rights associations in European countries. Mrs Şahin acknowledged having prepared documents which colleagues in