Bulut Yayla, a Turkish archaeology student and left-wing activist, says he travelled to Greece in April this year to escape imprisonment and torture he endured under the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Once in Athens he tried to seek asylum as a political refugee to escape an international arrest warrant issued against him after being accused of having links with an outlawed Marxist organisation.
On 30 May, Bulut, 26, left the restaurant where he worked, in the central Athens neighbourhood of Exarhia, to meet some friends He never made it. At around 9pm, witnesses say they saw five men beating him near the restaurant, forcing him into a car and driving off. Two days later, his family got a call from Turkish authorities, informing them he was in their custody, in a high-security prison. The head of Greek police later confirmed the car’s licence plates showed it was a police vehicle.
“He was seized, handcuffed and shoved by force in a car where they closed his eyes, nose and mouth, and tortured him,”
