[3] On the 9 October 2017, he was awarded the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
[1] The announcement of the Prize, which honours human rights defenders in Europe and beyond, cited his work to uphold the independence of the judiciary in Turkey.
[4] In January 2019, Arslan was sentenced to 10 years in prison for "participation to a terrorist organization".
No violent action or call for violence was reported, the accusation being based on an anonymous denunciation and the presence of ByLock on his smartphone, an privacy application that Turkish prosecutors claim was widely used by members of the Gülen movement.
The trial was not fair according to the UN Special Rapporteur for the independence of judges and lawyers Diego García Sayán:[5] “the conviction of Judge Arslan constitutes a severe and gross attack on the independence of the judiciary in Turkey, and in a democratic state under the rule of law an independent and impartial judiciary is a fundamental guarantee for society as a whole,” said the UN human rights expert.