High court clears man on shooting private video, sentences him on distributing footage

ANKARA - Anatolia News Agency

Hürriyet photo

A Turkish man in the western province of Aydın has been found guilty by the Court of Appeals on charges of threatening his ex-girlfriend with the distribution of their "private" video footage.

The local court had given the man a jail sentence on blackmail charges after a complaint lodged by the woman in question even though the judge acquitted him on charges of "taking or distributing private information.”

The high court, however, declared him guilty of "threatening" and of violating private life due to "the distribution, announcing and making public" of the video even though it was shot with the consent of the woman.

The woman had an affair with the man during a temporary breakup from her husband and had let him shoot the footage.

After the woman returned to her husband, the man began threatening to send the footage to their common workplace.