After spending 51 days behind bars in Turkey, Swedish journalist Joakim Medin has been released and is now heading home, though the charges against him still stand.
Medin, a reporter for the leftist Swedish outlet Dagens ETC, was arrested upon arrival in Turkey on March 28. He was accused of insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and of allegedly having ties to the outlawed Kurdish militant group PKK. A month into his detention, Turkish authorities added another charge: spreading terrorist propaganda.
Despite being released pending trial and allowed to leave the country, Medin remains under legal threat. The trial will continue in his absence.
Medin had traveled to Turkey to report on protests erupting after opposition leader Ekrem İmamoğlu, Erdoğan’s main challenger, was jailed. Dagens ETC editor-in-chief Andreas Gustavsson called the arrest a clearly political move aimed at silencing foreign scrutiny.
The release came as Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard met with her Turkish counterpart, Hakan Fidan, at a NATO meeting in Antalya.
