Shivani Gadhavi –
Published On: December 09, 2021 at 19:20 IST
On December 8th, 2021 a court in Greece acquitted an elected mufti of the Turkish Minority of 150,000 Muslim Turkish present in the country, who were accused of ‘overstepping his authority’ by performing certain duties being a religious official representing the minority.
The acquittal of Ibrahim Serif, the elected mufti of Komotini (Gümülcine) located in the northeastern part of Greece, was charged of seizing authority after attending a circumcision ceremony in 2016 and was about to face a trial in the northern city of Thessaloniki on December 9th, 2021.
Ercan Ahmet who is the lawyer of Ibrahim Serif, while speaking to Anadolu Agency (AA), stated that the prosecutor requested the Court to acquit mufti Ibrahim Serif, since there is no sufficient evidence for the conviction.
A set of lawyers from Istanbul, the Turkish-based International Jurists Union and the Second Istanbul Bar Association were also making their presence in the Court for the trial.
These three expressed their dismay in a statement, that the Turkish Muslim minority in the Western Thrace are not able to exercise their rights due to several bilateral and international treaties which also includes the Treaty of Lausanne of 1923.
The statement read, “Furthermore, Greek doesn’t respect decisions of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in favor of the Turkish Muslim minority,” and further added that the European Parliament (EP) overlooks this illegal state of affairs.
