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Belgium extradites Kurdish PKK leader to
France
20.2.2007 |
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February 20, 2007
Belgium last Friday extradited outlaw Kurdistan
Workers' Party (PKK) ringleader Canan Kurtyilmaz to
France, upon a request from the French police.
The French attorney general filed a judicial claim
against Kurtyilmaz, after her extradition to France
on Friday, objecting to the decision of the duty
judge to confine her under judicial control without
custody.
Though living in France, Kurtyilmaz was detained by
the Belgian police upon a request by the French
police, as part of operations recently carried out
in Paris.
French police earlier this month carried out raids
in Paris's Yvelines, Hauts-de-Seine,
Seine-Saint-Denis and Val d'Oise suburbs, arresting
12 Turks and one Australian, all of them of Kurdish
descent.
Two other Kurds were arrested later, one of them
while on a trip to Belgium. Riza Altun and Nedim
Seven, who are among the 15 people currently in
custody in France, are said to be members of the PKK
leadership. When 15 people who were taken into
custody were being questioned, Belgian police
arrested Canan Kurtyilmaz, a leading name of the
rebel group.
But the French and Belgian crackdown is seen by some
in Turkey as an empty show. Although leading members
of the PKK were detained in France, their
extradition to Turkey is seen as unlikely.
More than 30,000 Turkish soldiers and PKK guerrillas
have been killed since 1984 when the PKK took up
arms for self-rule in the country's mainly Kurdish
southeast of Turkey.
The United States and the European Union, like
Turkey, class the PKK as a "terrorist organisation"
ABHaber | thenewanatolian com
** The use of the term "Kurdistan" is vigorously
rejected due to its alleged political implications
by the Republic of Turkey, which does not recognize
the existence of a "Turkish Kurdistan" Southeast
Turkey.
Others estimate as many as 40 million Kurds live in
Big Kurdistan (Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran, Armenia),
which covers an area as big as France, about half of
all Kurds which estimate to 20 million live in
Turkey.
Turkey is home to some 20 million ethnic Kurds, some
of whom openly sympathise with the Kurdish PKK for a
Kurdish homeland in the country's mainly Kurdish
southeast of Turkey
The Kurdish flag flown officially in Iraqi Kurdistan but
unofficially flown by Kurds in Armenia. The flag is
banned in Iran, Syria, and Turkey where flying it is
a criminal offence"
Southeastern Turkey:
North Kurdistan (
Kurdistan-Turkey) wikipedia
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