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Turkey jails three for pro-Ocalan petition
campaign
25.4.2006
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DIYARBAKIR,
Kurdistan-Turkey, April 25, 2006 (AFP) - 15h50 - A
Turkish court Tuesday sentenced three university
students to more than six years in jail each for
circulating a petition supporting jailed Kurdish
rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan.
The court in Diyarbakir, the biggest city of the
mainly Kurdish-populated southeast, rejected the
defendants' arguments that they were using their
right to freedom of expression and convicted them of
membership in Ocalan's outlawed Kurdistan Workers'
Party (PKK).
The panel of judges first sentenced the three to
seven-and-a-half years imprisonment, then reduced
their sentences to six years and three months for
good behaviour during the trial.
The students were arrested in January after police
caught them collecting signatures at a residential
building here for their petition, which describes
Ocalan as representing the "political will" of the
Kurdish community.
Ocalan, 57, was sentenced to death for treason in
1999 in connection with the separatist campaign the
PKK launched in 1984 for self-rule in southeastern
Turkey which has claimed more than 37,000 lives.
The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in
2002, after Ankara abolished capital punishment to
ease its entry into the European Union.
Ocalan, long considered Turkey's public enemy number
one, has since then been the sole inmate of a prison
island in northwestern Turkey.
The PKK and its sympathizers often denounce Ocalan's
isolation and have staged sometimes violent protests
calling for his removal from solitary confinement.
AFP
Southeast Turkey: Northern Kurdistan (
Kurdistan-Turkey)
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