Fabien Azoulay, a Jewish man from France, was sentenced to 16 years and 8 months in a Turkish jail. Photo: Facebook

A French Jewish gay man who endured a hellish incarceration in a Turkish jail after being caught with a small amount of narcotics for personal use arrived home in France on Tuesday, following interventions on his behalf by President Emmanuel Macron among others.

A statement released on Twitter by lawyers for the detained man — 43-year-old Fabien Azoulay — confirmed that he had been transferred to France on Tuesday. They added that Azoulay’s release was the “outcome of a long struggle, in which the mobilization of public opinion was decisive.”

Tens of thousands of people had signed a petition to the Turkish authorities demanding Azoulay’s release. In April, the City Council of Paris called Azoulay’s sentence “excessive” and passed a resolution calling on Turkey to release him.

Azoulay was originally sentenced to 16 years and eight months in jail by the Istanbul Criminal Court in Sept. 2017 for “importing a banned narcotic product.” He had flown to Istanbul for a hair transplant operation and had only planned to stay in the city for a few days. At his hotel, Azoulay logged onto a Lithuania-based website where he purchased a small amount of GBL, a narcotic that is legal in many countries, for personal use. Azoulay was unaware when he made the order that the Turkish authorities had recently banned the use of GBL, a synthetic drug that enables feelings of euphoria among users and can also act as a sexual stimulant. Turkish customs intercepted the package and tracked its path to Azoulay’s hotel room, where they arrested him.

Despite his efforts to hide both his religion and his sexual orientation while in jail, Azoulay was repeatedly harassed and abused by other prisoners.  In one incident in Nov. 2019, Azoulay was badly injured by a jihadist inmate who discovered that he was Jewish and gay. While he was sleeping one night, the assailant poured boiling water over his body, resulting in Azoulay being hospitalized with second-degree burns.

“I pray and cry every day for a miracle to happen. I don’t see myself staying here for sixteen years and eight months,” Azoulay stated in one letter to his family. “There are so many of us. At night, to go to the toilet, you have to trample on those who are sleeping. When they are woken up, they have fits and only know how to respond with violence.”

While Azoulay was returned home as a prisoner who would serve the remainder of his sentence in a French prison, the authorities have no intention of detaining him as his actions are not illegal under French law.

Along with President Macron, Azoulay’s lawyers thanked a number of individuals and organizations for ending his plight in Turkey, including Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, and the French government’s human rights envoy Francois Zimeray, as well as the advocacy organizations Human Rights Watch (HRW), the International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute (IBAHRI) and the American Jewish Committee (AJC).