Vienna, 18/05/2017
The South East Europe Media Organisation (SEEMO) is alarmed about the news, that Sedat Kapanoğlu, founder of online portal Ekşi Sözlük, received a suspended sentence of 10 months in prison. Özgür Kuru was sentence to 7 months and 15 days suspended sentence. The charges in both cases are connected to the year 2011, when the web, according to the state prosecutor, published insults to the Prophet Muhammad, what is decsribed in the law as “insulting the religious values shared by a group of society.” Additional 38 members of the website community were detained by the police and charged with insulting religion on the thread, however the court decided to suspend the cases, however suspects would be retried if they commit the same crime within three years