CCPR/C/125/D/2980/2017 State party on 24 February 2007. The authors are represented by counsel, Mr. Walter Van Steenbrugge. The State party gave notice to the Secretary-General of a derogation under article 4 of the Covenant on 2 August 2016. On 9 August 2018, the State party notified the Secretary-General that the state of emergency had ended as at 19 July 2018 and that the derogation had been terminated accordingly. 1.2 In the initial complaint of 12 May 2017, family members of the authors claimed that the authors were being held in incommunicado detention at an unknown location in Turkey and were at risk of being subjected to torture. 1 They requested the Committee to issue interim measures consisting of a request to the State party to ensure that the authors were not arbitrarily detained or tortured pending the examination of their complaint by the Committee. On 19 May 2017, pursuant to rule 92 of its rules of procedure (now rule 94), the Committee, acting through its Special Rapporteur on new communications and interim measures, requested the State party to take all necessary measures to confirm the authors’ whereabouts and to put them immediately under the protection of the law, to officially inform the Committee and the authors’ families and representatives of their whereabouts, to take all measures necessary to enable the authors to be in contact with their relatives and to promptly bring the authors before a judge and give them access to a lawyer of their choice. 1.3 On 31 October 2017, the Committee, acting through its Special Rapporteur on new communications and interim measures, rejected the State party’s request to lift interim measures. The Committee requested that the State party take all measures necessary to promptly bring the authors before a judge and give them access to a lawyer of their choice, to provide the authors with prompt access to appropriate and adequate medical care and to ensure that the authors were authorized to communicate with and be visited by their families, counsel or any other person of their choice. Pursuant to rule 97 (3) of the Committee’s rules of procedure (now rule 93 (1)), the Committee also denied the State party’s request for the admissibility of the communication to be examined separately from the merits. 1.4 On 25 September 2017, I.A. withdrew his complaint before the Committee. On 27 February 2018, the State party requested the complaint as it pertained to him to be discontinued. The facts as submitted by the authors 2.1 The authors are considered to be connected to the Gülen movement by Turkish authorities. In 2017, they were residing in Malaysia. They submit that they were unlawfully deprived of their liberty under Malaysian anti-terrorism legislation, during the first week of May 2017, by individuals acting under the control or instructions of Turkish authorities. 2.2 At the time of their submission of the communication before the Committee, Mr. Karaman and Mr. Özçelik had both lived in Malaysia for 13 years. Mr. Karaman was the principal of Time International School, a school inspired by the teachings of Fethullah Gülen. On 2 May 2017, he was kidnapped in Malaysia owing to his affiliation with the Gülen movement. Closed-circuit television footage revealed that he was forced into a car by five unidentified persons in an underground parking garage. His family quickly discovered that he could not be reached and they alerted the local police and the United Nations office in Kuala Lumpur. Mr. Özçelik, an academic, was at this time awaiting resettlement by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) after having previously been the victim of an attempted abduction from his son’s home in Kuala Lumpur, when unidentified armed persons, who appeared to be linked to Malaysian security services, attempted to kidnap him and send him to Turkey. The local police intervened and stopped the rendition. He was detained for a period of 50 days before Malaysian authorities decided to release him pending trial. On 4 May 2017, he was once again deprived of his liberty by Malaysian police. 2.3 Gradually, it became clear to the authors’ family members that the authors were detained at the police headquarters in Kuala Lumpur. The authors did not have access to a lawyer or their case files. Their Malaysian lawyer immediately filed a request to obtain 1 2 Additional information was also provided by family members of the authors on 18 May 2017.