Engin Çeber was a Turkish

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

 human rights

Human rights

Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...

 activist who was tortured and killed while in police custody. Mehmet Ali Sahin

Mehmet Ali Sahin

Mehmet Ali Şahin is a Turkish politician. He was the Speaker of the Parliament of Turkey between 2009 and 2011....

, Turkey's justice minister apologized and announced that 19 officials had been suspended pending investigation.

Çeber was arrested after he issued a press release protesting that the shooting of a left-wing human rights activist by the police, which resulted in him being paralyzed has not been investigated or punished by the authorities.

He was sent to a prison in Istanbul, where he was severely beaten. After complaining to his lawyer, he was sent to a hospital, where he fell into a coma, dying of brain hemorrhage on October 8.

Amnesty International criticized Turkey's human rights record arguing that the death is "further proof that torture and ill-treatment are rife in places of detention in Turkey", despite the government "zero-tolerance" against torture.