Vice News Reporter Freed After 131 Days in Turkish Prison

Mohammed Rasool was held as "protective measure" since August, as part of crackdown on free press.

Mohammed Rasool, the Vice News reporter

Twitter

whose more than four month-detention by the Turkish government spawned the activist hashtag #FreeRasool, has been released from custody. 

Vice News released this statement regarding Rasool's release:

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 27 2015, while reporting in the region for VICE News.

Whilst 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.

The three reporters were arrested after having run afoul of Turkish authorities while covering conflicts between police and members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is considered a terrorist organization in Turkey. All the websites under Vice's corporate umbrella went dark for two hours in October to protest Rasool's continued detention. 

The France-based non-profit group Reporters Without Borders has called Turkey, a NATO ally and a nominal democracy with aspirations of joining the European Union, the "world's biggest prison for journalists." Bulent Kenes, until recently the editor-in-chief of the country's most popular English language newspaper, awaits trial following his arrest in October for allegedly insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an in two tweets that did not mention the president's name. 

Comments

[BearOdinson]

And go:

“Have you ever seen a grown man naked?”

[TheHeathen]

“Jimmy, do you like Gladiator movies?”

[Stress N. Strain]

Argh! Ninja’ed!

[Pl?ya Manhattan.]

Do you ever hang around a gymnasium?

[Loki]

Dammit, I was coming here specifically to make the obligatory Airplane references, but I was too slow. Damned work!

[BearOdinson]

If you weren’t so busy trying to plan Ragnarok! Fucking trickster god!

[Loki]

Well, Ragnarok isn’t going to plan itself, is it!?

[Stress N. Strain]

“Do you ever hang around the gymnasium?”

[Hamster of Doom]

I would sexually harass him with malice aforethought.

[Hamster of Doom]

I’m sorry, what were we talking about?

[Pl?ya Manhattan.]

I bet you’re thinking about him in the Turkish Prison right now.

[Hamster of Doom]

You say the sweetest things.

[Citizen X]

Hamster DOES like gladiator movies. Why?

[Lee G]

It’s the sandals

[Hamster of Doom]

Have I told you about the Umbaka?

[Juvenile Bluster]

Do we have confirmation on the story that Erdogan enjoys sex with goats?

[Suthenboy]

That is not a very nice thing to say about his sister. What did she do to deserve that?

[Pl?ya Manhattan.]

She was eating the laundry off of the clothes line.

[B.P.]

“You turned off your website for two hours in my honor? That’s great. So, I’ve been sitting in a Turkish prison for four months calculating my overtime pay…”

[DJF]

“calculating my overtime pay” and watching gladiator movies

[Loki]

When not hanging around the prison gymnasium.

[Tonio]

You know who else initiated force against reporters they didn’t like?

[Hamster of Doom]

Diana’s limo driver?

[Tonio]

Honourable mention.

[B.P.]

Melissa Click?

[Tonio]

^Winner.

[Hugh Akston]

Everyone watch out! She’s hurt feelings before and she’s just crazy enough to do it again!

[Ceci n'est pas un woodchipper]

Sheesh, if you love her so much why don’t you marry her?

[Diane Reynolds (Paul.)]

Is Click your mom?

[sloopyinTEXAS]

Palpatine?

[BearOdinson]

J. Jonah Jameson?

[Swiss Servator]

Heh….Melissa Click?

[Swiss Servator]

REFRESH!!!!

[B. Woodrow Chippenhaus]

Lex Luthor?

[Loki]

Superman. I’m pretty sure he didn’t get affirmative consent before fucking Lois Lane. And he blows a load like a shotgun, so I’m pretty sure he didn’t actually like her, but just wanted to get some Earthing strange.

[tarran]

Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex by Larry Niven

Consider the driving urge between a man and a woman, the monomaniacal urge to achieve greater and greater penetration. Remember also that we are dealing with kryptonian muscles.

Superman would literally crush LL’s body in his arms, while simultaneously ripping her open from crotch to sternum, gutting her like a trout.

Lastly, he’d blow off the top of her head.

But LL’s problems are just beginning.

Within her body there are still tens of millions of frustrated kryptonian sperm. The single egg is now too diffuse to be a target. The sperm scatter.

They scatter without regard to what is in their path. They leave curved channels, microscopically small. Presently all will have found their way to the open air.

That leaves LL with several million microscopic perforations all leading deep into her abdomen. Most of the channels will intersect one or more loops of intestine.

Peritonitis is inevitable. LL becomes desperately ill.

Meanwhile, tens of millions of sperm swarm in the air over Metropolis.

[a better chipper]

Joe Biden?

[Loki]

All the websites under Vice’s corporate umbrella went dark for two hours in October to protest Rasool’s continued detention.

Yeah, I’m sure that showed ’em. /sarc

Bulent Kenes, until recently the editor-in-chief of the country’s most popular English language newspaper, awaits trial following his arrest in October for allegedly insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an

I’m sure the Obamatron is green with envy. As for Erdogan, I hear from a knowledgeable source that goat fucking is quite common in Turkey, so it’s not beyond reason to assume…

[GILMORE?]

“Hey man, I heard you have a rough time. Why don’t you come over, we’ll have a few beers, watch a movie….”

*(Sets aside Midnight Express Blue Ray)

[Loki]

I’m ashamed at how hard I laughed at that. Extra points for referencing something other than Airplane.

[sloopyinTEXAS]

This is the biggest tragedy of this story, as far as I’m concerned. Reason commentators are given a softball story for movie references and all they can do is quote “Airplane!”

::presses nipple to glass while weeping::

[Pl?ya Manhattan.]

There is no movie but Airplane. Say it with me.

[sloopyinTEXAS]

It’s “Airplane!” You philistine.

[Hamster of Doom]

Presented without commentary.

[Lee G]

“it with me”

satisfied?

[sloopyinTEXAS]

::golf clap::

[GILMORE?]

“”presses nipple to glass while weeping:””

(Elbows Rasool) “your girlfriend visit too? No?”

[Swiss Servator]

OT: looks like the earlier reports might have been a bit underwhelming?

http://www.dw.com/en/string-of…..a-18958334

[Rich]

“the great majority of the people who have come to us have done so because their lives are no longer safe in their homelands.”

Too much raping there?

[R C Dean]

Nah. The Russians started bombing them. Time to go to Germany! (As if the Russians haven’t bombed Germany, too).

I’m curious, though: how do the Germans know whether these people are Syrian or refugees, anyway?

I gotta say, a mob of a thousand young men engaging in a (near?) riot does sound very refugee-ish to me.

[Suthenboy]

“It is our city and I can only encourage everyone to live as they did beforehand,” said the 58-year-old jurist and social welfare official…” – mayor of Cologne regarding the invasion of savages from Ooga Booga.

I think that encapsulates the breathtaking naivety of the useful idiots who run Europe rather nicely.

“We cannot tolerate this development of lawlessness,” Reker told the “K?lner Stadt-Anzeiger” newspaper.” – Mayor Dumbshit post-New years eve attack.

[Notorious UGCC]

I see you’ve already done the mandatory “Turkish prison” jokes.

[widget]

I believe you will get a small bowl of rice pilaff once a day in a turkish prison.