2016 prison census - Turkey: Zehra Dogan

Police on July 22, 2016, detained Zehra Dogan-a reporter for the pro-Kurdish Jin News Agency (JINHA), which is staffed entirely by women-in Nusaybin, in Turkey's southeastern Mardin Province. The following day, the Nusaybin Court of Penal Peace ordered the journalist jailed, pending trial, on charges of "being member of an armed terrorist organization," CPJ reported at the time. Mardin's Second Court for Serious Crimes court on October 9, 2016, indicted her on that charge, and that of "making propaganda for a [terrorist] organization."

At the time of Dogan's arrest, Nusaybin was the site of urban warfare between Turkish security forces and ethnic-Kurdish fighters. According to the record of her interrogation by police, the court's order to jail her pending trial, and her indictment, all of which the Committee to Protect Journalists has reviewed, the state's evidence consists of testimonies from people saying they saw Dogan talking with people in the street. The witnesses said that they could not hear the conversations, but that they were "organization meetings." Witnesses also said they saw Dogan ask locals to pose for photographs with tools as though they were helping fighters dig trenches and construct barricades in order to show the local population's support for the fight. Dogan denied being a member of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), maintained that the conversations in question were interviews conducted as part of her reporting, and denied that the photographs were posed, the records show.

As of late 2016, the journalist was jailed in Mardin Prison, pending trial.