North denies reports of extradition request for journalist Levent

The north’s ‘foreign ministry’ on Friday denied reports that Turkey had filed an extradition request against veteran Cypriot journalist Sener Levent.

Turkish Cypriot news agency Tak reported that ‘ministry’ sources had said that reports of an extradition request “do not reflect the truth” and are “disinformation”.

“The Turkish justice ministry has not made any extradition request from the TRNC regarding Sener Levent,” the sources said.

Levent himself had said he had been summoned to present himself to the Ankara chief public prosecutor’s office lest he be extradited to Turkey.

The summons is reportedly related to the publication of a cartoon published in Levent’s newspaper, then called Afrika, on December 21, 2017, showing a Greek statue urinating on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

As a result of the cartoon, he had been sentenced in absentia to a year in prison in Ankara for “insulting” Erdogan, before later being acquitted of related charges at a court in northern Nicosia.

Earlier on Friday, he had promised to “never surrender” over the matter.

“They are calling on me to surrender, right? I will not surrender. I will not surrender, as I wrote in the newspaper. I did not surrender in the past to fascism, and I will not surrender. If they want, let them arrest me. For me, this Ankara court decision is non-existent,” he told the Cyprus News Agency.

In the early hours of Friday morning, parliament had unanimously passed a resolution condemning what was described as the “illegal persecution” of Levent.

The resolution, submitted by Diko MP Pavlos Mylonas, read that parliament is “watching with particular concern the attempt by the Turkish state to silence the Turkish Cypriot journalist and publisher Sener Levent”.

It added that it is “particularly concerned about the actions of the pseudo-state, which, as Ankara’s agent, issued an arrest warrant against him”.

It stressed that Levent is a citizen of the Republic of Cyprus, and as such said it “unequivocally condemns this attempt by the occupation regime to intimidate a citizen of the Republic of Cyprus”.