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A
district court in the Netherlands has blocked the
extradition of an alleged Kurdish rebel leader
wanted in Turkey for her suspected role in a series
of bombings in the 1990s.
The ruling on Monday countered a decision by Dutch
Justice Minister Piet Hein Donner in September and a
Dutch Supreme Court ruling that Nuriye Kesbir could
be handed over.
Kesbir has fought her transfer to Turkey since she
was detained in the Netherlands in September 2001
while illegally entering the country. Her
applications for asylum have been rejected.
She is allegedly a leading member of the Kurdistan
Workers Party, or PKK, a rebel group seeking an
independent Kurdish state in south-eastern Turkey.
Approval
Donner approved her extradition after receiving
guarantees from Turkish authorities that Kesbir
would receive a fair trial.
In its ruling, the district court in The Hague ruled
that the Dutch government could not take Turkish
embassy guarantees as a sufficient basis for going
ahead with the extradition.
"The [justice] minister, based on the current
guarantees from the Turkish embassy, could not
reasonably arrive at a decision to allow the
extradition," it said.
The court said the justice ministry had overlooked
several reports from the United Nations and other
organisations which accused Turkish authorities of
torturing Kurdish activists.
The Dutch government has not yet decided whether to
appeal the ruling, a ministry spokesman said.
Accusation
Turkey accuses Kesbir of training female PKK
fighters and of planning and making armed attacks
that resulted in 144 deaths.
She has denied the charges but confirmed holding a
leadership position in the PKK. Kesbir's lawyer was
not immediately available for comment on Monday's
ruling.
The PKK has for 20 years been fighting for a Kurdish
homeland in south-east Turkey, a conflict that has
killed more than 30,000 people, mostly ethnic Kurds.
Violence dropped off sharply with the capture of PKK
leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1999 and most PKK
guerrillas withdrew to northern Iraq.
Turkey has approved a flurry of human rights reforms
in recent years in its drive to join the European
Union, but critics say they are not being put into
practice on the ground.
They have included abolition of the death penalty,
scrapping the military-dominated state security
courts, easing restrictions on freedom of
expression, clamping down on torture and extending
cultural rights to the Kurdish minority.
http://english.aljazeera.net
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