Abdullah Kaya, a former reporter for the shuttered Dicle News Agency (DİHA), is serving a four-year and two-month prison sentence for "being a member of a [terrorist] organization," according to news reports.
A report published by the pro-Kurdish Mezopatanya News Agency in May 2018 said that evidence cited against Kaya included images he took during a September 2014 event in Ağrı called the Peace and Nature festival, in which flags and banners of the outlawed Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) were visible.
Police first detained Kaya on January 18, 2017, after searching his house in the Diyadin district of the eastern province of Ağr for three hours, according to reports. Several other Kurdish people were detained the same day, the reports said. A court on January 20, 2017, ordered Kaya jailed pending trial on charges of "being member of a [terrorist] organization," according to reports. A court on May 11, 2017, ordered Kaya to be released pending the outcome of his trial, reports said.
Kaya was taken back into custody on December 24, 2017, when an appeals court in the Diyadin district of Turkey’s eastern Ağrı province upheld an earlier guilty verdict, according to reports.
The journalist is jailed in Ağrı Prison, according to news reports. As of October 2018, CPJ was unable to reach a legal representative for the journalist.