Heightened police protection for the two Christians and their lawyer was attributed to the shocking assassination 10 days earlier of another Turkish Christian, prominent Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, murdered in Istanbul by a teenage nationalist.
The two Christians, who are both converts from Islam, are also accused under less-known penal statutes of reviling Islam (Article 216) and secretly compiling private data on Turkish citizens for a Bible correspondence course (Article 135).
At their January 29 hearing, the presiding judge again closed his court to all observers, with only the defendants and their lawyer present for the defense. They faced seven prosecuting lawyers led by ultranationalist attorney Kemal Kerincsiz, notorious in Turkey for having hounded the outspoken Dink with multiple charges under Article 301.
(Snip, article here)
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