Dutch apartment of journalist briefly held in Turkey robbed

A Dutch journalist who was briefly detained by Turkish police after tweeting about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says Monday her Amsterdam apartment had been broken into, denouncing what she called “intimidation.”

“So there was a burglary in my Amsterdam home. I m impressed. intimidated. o wait… I M NOT,” Ebru Umar writes on her Twitter account in English.

In another Tweet, she says the break-in was “no coincidence.”

Umar, a well-known atheist and feminist journalist of Turkish origin, says she was hauled out of bed and arrested late Saturday at her home in Kusadasi, a resort town in western Turkey.

She was released on Sunday after top Dutch officials voiced concerns at her arrest, but is not allowed to leave the country and must report to police twice a week.

Police had questioned her for about 16 hours over two Tweets she had sent in which she sharply criticized Erdogan.

But Umar tells the daily Metro, a Dutch newspaper which she writes for, that her Amsterdam apartment was burgled overnight, saying the door “was forced open, and my old computer was taken.”

She takes to Twitter on Monday to voice her thanks to everyone for their support during her detention. Although the officers were “a bit harsh” at first, Umar says she had been “treated very well.”

— AFP