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MARSEILLE, France, Feb 16 (AFP) - A niece of
Abdullah Ocalan, the Kurdish rebel leader jailed in
Turkey, was deported from France to Italy on
Wednesday to pursue an asylum request there, French
officials said.
Ayney Ocalan, 24, was escorted from Marseille to
Rome after being ordered to report to the southern
French city's main police station, her lawyer,
Lionel Febbraro, told AFP.
She had arrived in Marseille in November last year
but French authorities determined she could not stay
in France until her asylum application was processed
in Italy, he said.
Febbraro called his client's summons to the police
station on Tuesday "a trap" and said he had lodged a
legal complaint against the deportation as soon as
she was detained.
If she wins the complaint, she may be allowed back
into France, he explained.
Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the separatist
Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), was snatched by
Turkish agents on February 15, 1999 as he left a
Greek embassy in Kenya where he had taken refuge.
After being returned to Turkey, he was sentenced to
death, but that was commuted to life imprisonment in
2002 when Turkey abolished capital punishment as
part of its bid to join the European Union.
He is being held in solitary confinement on an
island prison in northwest Turkey.
On Tuesday 15.Feb.2005 - the sixth anniversary of
Ocalan's capture -- hundreds of Kurds took to the
streets of Marseille to call for Ocalan's release.
Similar demonstrations took place in Turkey and
elsewhere.
The PKK waged a bloody armed campaign for Kurdish
self-rule in southeast Turkey between 1984 and 1999,
with the conflict claiming some 37,000 lives.
The rebels ended a five-year unilateral ceasefire
with Ankara last June.
AFP
DIYARBAKIR, Turkey, Feb 15 (AFP) - 17h53 - At
least 18 people were injured and 70 others detained
across Turkey Tuesday when police clashed with
Kurdish activists at demonstrations marking the
capture of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan six
years ago.
The most troubled protest was in Diyarbakir, the
central city of the mainly Kurdish southeast, where
15 people were hurt and 55 others taken into
custody.
"End the isolation," read banners held by a crowd of
some 300 activists, referring to Ocalan's solitary
confinement on a prison island in northwestern
Turkey since his capture in Kenya on February 15,
1999.
Kurdish activists have long been calling for
Ocalan's transfer to an ordinary jail, but their
appeals have so far fallen on deaf ears in Ankara.
Police moved on the demonstrators, using truncheons
and tear gas, when they refused to disperse after
reading out a press statement and demanded to also
stage a march and a sit-in.
The injured included policemen hurt by stones hurled
by the crowd.
In Istanbul, riot police sprayed pepper gas on a
crowd of several hundred people who attempted to
march to the Greek consulate to denounce Greece's
role in Ocalan's capture.
The protestors responded by throwing stones which
they had ripped out of the pavement, breaking also
the windows of several buildings nearby.
Turkish agents nabbed Ocalan in Nairobi after he was
forced to leave the Greek embassy there, where he
had been offered refuge for several days while on
the run.
Police allowed a small group to lay a black wreath
outside the consulate.
In the western city of Izmir, protestors armed with
stones and molotov cocktails and chanting pro-Ocalan
slogans also clashed with the police, leaving three
people injured and one in custody, Anatolia news
agency reported.
In Mersin, on Turkey's southern coast, riot police,
backed by an armored vehicle, disrupted a
demonstration in which the protestors set bonfires
in the streets, television footage showed.
Fourteen people were detained, the NTV news channel
reported.
Hundreds of Kurds also took to the streets in the
southern French city of Marseille to call for
Ocalan's release.
Ocalan, the leader of the outlawed Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK), was condemned to death in June
1999, but his sentence was commuted to life in
prison in 2001 following Turkey's abolition of
capital punishment as part of reforms to embrace
European Union norms.
The PKK waged a bloody armed campaign for Kurdish
self-rule in southeast Turkey between 1984 and 1999,
with the conflict claiming some 37,000 lives.
The rebels ended a five-year unilateral ceasefire
with Ankara last June.
AFP
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