The Adana 13th High Criminal Court on 9 March handed down three years one month and 15 days to journalists Murat Karakaş and Leyla Yıldız on charges of "aiding and abetting" a terrorist organization, Gazete Karınca reported.
Karakaş is a distributor of the magazine Özgür Toplum (Free Society) and Yıldız distributes the newspaper Özgürlükçü Demokrasi (Libertarian Democracy).
According to a report from the independent news network Gazete Karınca, the two media workers didn't attend the trial. They were represented in court by their lawyer Tugay Bek.
Bek in his defense statement that the publications weren't banned at the time of the arrest of the two distributors, but were criminalized after their detention.
