Vice News has confirmed that journalist Mohammed Rasool has been released on bail from a Turkish prison after 131 days behind bars. Rasool was arrested in August while reporting from the city of Diyarbakir, which lies in a heavily Kurdish region of southeastern Turkey.
“Rasool is now looking forward to being reunited with his family, friends and colleagues, who ask for his privacy to be respected during this time,” a Vice spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday.
As a condition of his release, Rasool, 25, who was born in Iraqi Kurdistan, may not leave Turkey and must check in at a police station twice a week while he awaits trial.
Rasool and fellow Vice journalists Jake Hanrahan and Philip Pendlebury were covering the escalating tension between police and the youth faction of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party this past summer when they were picked up for not having proper government identification. They were later charged with “aiding a terrorist organization,” an accusation that Vice has called “baseless and alarmingly false.”
Hanrahan and Pendlebury, both British citizens, were released in September, while Rasool, an Iraqi citizen, remained behind bars.
In October, Vice News protested Rasool's continued imprisonment by shutting down all of its digital sites for two hours and launching a campaign on Twitter using the hashtag #FreeRasool.
"The very existence of democracy relies on a free and thriving fourth estate," Vice Media CEO Shane Smith said in October. "Please help us focus attention on Rasool's case, by sharing the hashtag on social media of #FreeRasool, and keeping pressure on the Turkish authorities to free him immediately."
Turkey is one of the world's leading jailers of journalists with 13 members of the press behind bars in the country, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
"We are relieved that Mohammed Ismael Rasool is free on bail after spending 131 days in a high-security prison on trumped up terrorism charges," Robert Mahoney, deputy executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said in a statement on Tuesday. "We urge Turkish authorities to drop all charges against him and allow him to travel and work freely."
Vice News has become well-known for its risky brand of journalism, reporting from some of the most dangerous regions of the world. It gained rare access to a part of Syria controlled by the self-described Islamic State in the summer of 2014 and documented the ongoing conflict in the Central African Republic in January 2015.
Read the full statement from Vice here:
Today, VICE News is pleased to confirm its reporter, Mohammed Rasool has been released on bail having been held in a Turkish prison for 131 days.
Along with his journalist colleagues, Phil Pendlebury and Jake Hanrahan, Rasool was arrested and imprisoned by Turkish police on August 27th 2015, while reporting in the region for VICE News.
While Pendlebury and Hanrahan were released after 11 days, Rasool remained detained for over four months, charged with ‘assisting a terrorist organization’.
Rasool is now looking forward to being reunited with his family, friends and colleagues, who ask for his privacy to be respected during this time.
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