Vice News journalist freed from Turkish prison

A freelance journalist who had been working for Vice News was freed from prison in Turkey on Tuesday after 131 days in custody.

Mohammed Rasool was arrested last summer, along with two other reporters from the news organization who were freed soon after being jailed.

{mosads}Rasool’s continued imprisonment had been seen as evidence of a press crackdown in Turkey, a country that has long been accused of practicing heavy censorship. Turkey ranks 149th out of 180 countries on the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index.

In October, Vice blacked out all of its websites across the globe to highlight Rasool’s jailing.

Rasool had been accused of having ties to a terrorist group while covering Turkish clashes with Kurdish separatists. Vice has called that charge “entirely baseless” and “absurd.”

“We were detained for doing our jobs and hit with bizarre accusations about being agents of the Islamic State — a group we weren’t even reporting on,” Jake Hanrahan, a British journalist for Vice working alongside Rasool at the time, wrote last September, shortly after he was freed. The Islamic State is another name for the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). 

The journalist’s release on bail is likely to be greeted warmly by free press advocates, even though he will not be entirely free. According to Vice, which detailed the terms of his release on Tuesday, Rasool cannot leave Turkey and must report twice a week to a local police station.

“Rasool is now looking forward to being reunited with his family, friends and colleagues, who ask for his privacy to be respected during this time,” Vice said in a statement.

Rasool is from Iraq. The third Vice reporter arrested last summer, Philip Pendlebury, is British, like Hanrahan.

He has also worked for The Associated Press and Al Jazeera.