A German newspaper correspondent in Turkey has been taken into police custody in connection with his reporting on a hacker attack on the email account of Turkey's energy minister, his employer said Friday.
Die Welt said on its website that Deniz Yücel, who has both Turkish and German citizenship, went to police offices in İstanbul to face questioning and that his apartment had been searched.
Turkish authorities accuse Deniz Yücel of being a member of a terrorist organisation, misuse of data and terrorist propaganda, Die Welt said on Friday.
Yücel, 43, had reported on emails that were obtained by the leftist hacker collective RedHack from the private email account of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's son-in-law Energy Minister, Berat Albayrak and made available on WikiLeaks, the paper said. The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks published a 57,934-email archive of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's son-in-law Berat Albayrak, who is also the country's energy minister, in December. The emails span over 16 years and consist of correspondence between Albayrak and the Turkish elite.
"Our correspondent Deniz Yücel does excellent work … The Turkish government constantly stresses that Turkey is beholden to the rule of law. Therefore we trust that fair proceedings will prove his innocence," editor-in-chief Ulf Poschardt said.
Germany's Foreign Ministry said Yücel has been in police detention since Tuesday "in connection with a criminal investigation.
