Vice journalists charged with 'terrorism offences' in Turkey

Two British journalists and their Iraqi colleague working for Vice News have been charged with assisting Islamic State in Turkey.

Jake Hanrahan, Philip Pendlebury and Mohamed Ismail Rasool were arrested by Turkish officials on Thursday and have now been officially charged with "engaging in terror activity" on behalf of the terrorist group.

Vice News calls the allegations "baseless and alarmingly false" and human rights organisations and media freedom groups are calling for the journalists' immediate release.

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What happened?

The three men and their driver were arrested while covering clashes that erupted between the police and youth members of the banned pro-Kurdish organisation PKK in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, according to Al Jazeera. The driver has since been released, but the others remain in custody. The journalists' lawyer told Amnesty International that authorities had searched their hotel room and seized all of their equipment, including cameras and computers.

What has the response been?

Vice News's head of news programming in Europe, Kevin Sutcliffe, said in a statement that the Turkish government had levelled "baseless and alarmingly false charges" to try and intimidate and censor its coverage. "We continue to work with all relevant authorities to expedite the safe release of our three colleagues and friends," he said.

Amnesty, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Index on Censorship are demanding that the Turkish government release the journalists immediately unless they can demonstrate credible evidence of criminal acts. "The allegation of assisting Islamic state is unsubstantiated, outrageous and bizarre," says Amnesty's Turkey researcher Andrew Gardner.

Index on Censorship, which promotes and defends the right to freedom of expression, reports that Turkey has one of the world's worst records on media freedom. "Coming just days after the unjust sentencing of three Al Jazeera journalists in Egypt, these latest detentions of journalists simply for doing their jobs underlines the way in which governments everywhere can use terror legislation to prevent the media from operating," said the organisation's chief executive Jodie Ginsberg.