A French journalist who was arrested while covering a protest over a Syrian government offensive targeting Kurdish fighters has been released, though it is not clear whether the charges against him have been dropped.
"I am on my way home," Raphael Boukandoura, 35, told the AFP news agency in a brief phone call on Wednesday. He was speaking from a taxi bringing him home from the migrant detention centre in Arnavutkoy, near Istanbul airport, where he had been transferred after his arrest on Monday.
His lawyer Emine Ozhasar confirmed he had been freed, adding that they were still waiting to hear details of his release.
Boukandoura, who has been living in Turkey for at least a decade and holds an official press card, was arrested on Monday while he was covering a protest called by pro-Kurdish opposition party DEM for the French daily newspaper Libération.
He was arrested along with nine other people when police broke up the protest, and was accused of joining in with the protesters shouting slogans against the Turkish military offensive targeting Kurds in north-eastern Syria.
He denied taking part in the protest, and said he was there as a journalist covering the event.
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'Hazardous job'
France's foreign ministry had on Tuesday said it hoped Boukandoura, who regularly covers Turkey for French publications, would be "freed as quickly as possible".
The European Parliament's Turkey rapporteur Nacho Sanchez Amor had also said he was following "with concern" the reporter's case, especially the threat of deportation.
"Independent journalism is really a hazardous job in Turkiye for locals and foreigners," he wrote on social media before Boukandoura's release.
Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) had earlier called it "unacceptable" to threaten a French journalist with expulsion for doing his job.
"It is intended to intimidate journalists covering pro-Kurdish protests in Turkey," the group’s Turkey representative Erol Onderoglu told AFP.
(with AFP)
