Summer
October 9th, 2008, 12:15 PM
Irishman's two days of hell in Turkish jail
AN IRISHMAN spent more than two days in a "cramped, filthy and hellish" prison last week because Turkish passport officials failed to give him the correct stamp on entering the country.
And the Irish consular official who helped Gareth O'Sullivan during his prison stay in Istanbul told him an elderly Irish woman suffered a similar fate last year.
"In the daytime I was in a cell which was within earshot and eyeshot of the guards and it was bright," Mr O'Sullivan (38) said yesterday.
"There might be four people in there or there might be nine but you knew nothing severe was going to happen because the guards were close.
"But at night time I was brought two levels down to a tiny cell with four or five people in it, no beds, only filthy blankets, which I didn't touch.
"At that point I didn't even know if anyone knew where I was. No-one spoke English to me, nobody knew why I was in there and I was being treated like an animal. It was like a really bad movie. The first day and a half -- until the Irish consulate arrived -- was very frightening. You had no time to build a rapport with others in the cell as they were coming and going and the guards didn't want to know, and didn't speak English either."
Mr O'Sullivan, who is from Ballina in Mayo, travelled to Marmaris on September 16 with his fiancée Anna, son Liam (1) and two of Anna's extended family. On September 26, the group went on a day trip to the Greek island of Rhodes.
"Our passports were stamped on the way out and we handed them over on the way back into Turkey too," he said. "But, after having checked it in retrospect, only three of the five were stamped on our return."
Mr O'Sullivan's passport and his son's were not stamped on re-entry, but when the youngster and his mother took a direct flight from Marmaris to their home in Iceland, there was no problem.
However, when Mr O'Sullivan, who is a football coach in Reykjavik, attempted to travel from Istanbul to Dublin last Wednesday for a coaching course, he was stopped and thrown in prison.
"It wasn't 'Midnight Express' but it was hairy enough," he said. Mr O'Sullivan spent from noon on Wednesday until 6pm on Friday in the prison, eventually securing his release to Germany.
"The consul did tell me that a 71-year-old Irish woman was held in similar fashion last year," Mr O'Sullivan said.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said last night that it was aware of both incidents but has no warning on its website as "human error was to blame".
http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/irishmans-two-days-of-hell-in-turkish-jail-1493064.html
AN IRISHMAN spent more than two days in a "cramped, filthy and hellish" prison last week because Turkish passport officials failed to give him the correct stamp on entering the country.
And the Irish consular official who helped Gareth O'Sullivan during his prison stay in Istanbul told him an elderly Irish woman suffered a similar fate last year.
"In the daytime I was in a cell which was within earshot and eyeshot of the guards and it was bright," Mr O'Sullivan (38) said yesterday.
"There might be four people in there or there might be nine but you knew nothing severe was going to happen because the guards were close.
"But at night time I was brought two levels down to a tiny cell with four or five people in it, no beds, only filthy blankets, which I didn't touch.
"At that point I didn't even know if anyone knew where I was. No-one spoke English to me, nobody knew why I was in there and I was being treated like an animal. It was like a really bad movie. The first day and a half -- until the Irish consulate arrived -- was very frightening. You had no time to build a rapport with others in the cell as they were coming and going and the guards didn't want to know, and didn't speak English either."
Mr O'Sullivan, who is from Ballina in Mayo, travelled to Marmaris on September 16 with his fiancée Anna, son Liam (1) and two of Anna's extended family. On September 26, the group went on a day trip to the Greek island of Rhodes.
"Our passports were stamped on the way out and we handed them over on the way back into Turkey too," he said. "But, after having checked it in retrospect, only three of the five were stamped on our return."
Mr O'Sullivan's passport and his son's were not stamped on re-entry, but when the youngster and his mother took a direct flight from Marmaris to their home in Iceland, there was no problem.
However, when Mr O'Sullivan, who is a football coach in Reykjavik, attempted to travel from Istanbul to Dublin last Wednesday for a coaching course, he was stopped and thrown in prison.
"It wasn't 'Midnight Express' but it was hairy enough," he said. Mr O'Sullivan spent from noon on Wednesday until 6pm on Friday in the prison, eventually securing his release to Germany.
"The consul did tell me that a 71-year-old Irish woman was held in similar fashion last year," Mr O'Sullivan said.
The Department of Foreign Affairs said last night that it was aware of both incidents but has no warning on its website as "human error was to blame".
http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/irishmans-two-days-of-hell-in-turkish-jail-1493064.html