to the public prosecutor. He was horrified and said: “There is no need for this. Your sentence was short and only a small part of it remains. There is no need to send this.”
Thus, you have understood the truly strange examples like this one in my defence and objection, which has been presented to you and the departments of government in Ankara. What I seek and hope from Afyon Court is this: I await from you in the name of true justice that you decide on the complete freedom of the Risale-i Nur, whose service and effulgence profits the nation and country as much as an army. Otherwise, I have to inform you that when the five or ten of my friends who were sent to prison because of their relations with me are released, I have the idea of committing some offence which will necessitate the heaviest penalty, compelling me to bid farewell to this life. It is like this:
Although for the good of the country and nation, the Government should give me full protection and assist me, the fact that it is pressurizing me suggests that part of the communist organization and the secret atheistic society that have been working against me these last forty years, with which it has now combined, have both gained control of important positions, and are opposing me. It worries me, for there are numerous signs that the Government either does not know of this, or it is permitting it.
Chairman of the Court! With your permission, I shall ask you a question about which I am extremely curious: why, although I have in no way been involved in politics, have the politicians deprived me of all civil rights, all liberties, and even all the rights of life? And why have they forbidden my very careful brothers and loyal assistants to have any contact with me, who tried to protect me against those plans to assassinate me while I was being held for three and a half months in total isolation, and to defend me against my covert enemies who have poisoned me eleven times, and have even prevented me, although I am elderly, alone, in exile, and ill, from studying my blessed, harmless books, which I always had with me?
I pleaded with the public prosecutor to give me my books, but he did not give them although he promised. They compelled me to remain alone in a huge, locked, and freezing ward with nothing to occupy myself, and instead of the officials and menials concerned being friendly and comforting, they quite simply encouraged them to look on me hostilely. A small example is this: I wrote a petition to the prison governor, public prosecutor, and chairman of the court, and sent it to one of my brothers to write out since I do not know the new letters. It was written and was given to them. Then, as though I had committed some heinous crime, they nailed