Twenty-nine Turkish police have gone on trial in Istanbul charged with involvement in last July's attempted coup, the city's first trial of alleged plotters in the massive crackdown that followed the failed bid to oust president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
The group's founder, Muhammad Yusuf, died in police custody in July 2009, and hundreds of others were killed during that massive crackdown - which many blame for making the group even more violent.
As the massive crackdown on critics was in full-swing across Turkey, we did not rule out that our father could be the next victim.
"Even since these arrests, other arrests have continued to take place," said Long. "This is part of a massive crackdown that has seen as many as 150 people arrested, and many of those people are still in jail".
This comes on the tail of a massive crackdown on the LGBTQ community following a concert in Cairo this past September.
This morning, Syrian/Iranian forces commenced a new, more massive crackdown on the eve of Ramadan, which the Assad regime fears will transform every day into a Friday of demonstrations.
Though it is not clear what has sparked the sudden increase of the last few months, the situation in El Salvador has become particularly acute this year in the context of a massive crackdown on warring street gangs that does not seem to be working.
This April, China announced the results of one such massive crackdown, which it said resulted in more than 600,000 drug users being "punished" since October, while another 133,000 were arrested for drug-related crimes.
Egypt is in the middle of a massive crackdown primarily targeting members of the Muslim Brotherhood and anyone associated with it.
