From: Press Agenccy Ozgurluk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 03:42:20 +0200 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Ozgurluk] Turkey: Pro-Kurdish party leader put in jail for "separatist propaganda" ANKARA, Aug 17 (AFP) - A senior official of Turkey's pro-Kurdish People's Democracy Party (HADEP) was jailed Friday for 39 days for disseminating "separatist propaganda," his lawyer said. The conviction of HADEP deputy chairman Ahmet Turan Demir stemmed from remarks he made at a party function in October 1999, in which he likened a prospective settlement of the Kurdish conflict in Turkey to the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, lawyer Mehmet Nuri Ozmen told AFP. He was alleged to have said: "They resolved their problems like this, I mean they split up without a quarrel. The problem here must be resolved in this or any other way." Demir was originally sentenced to one year in jail. But his term was commuted to 39 days after the court took into account the time he had spent in detention in connection with other cases for which he was acquitted, Ozmen said. Demir escaped another jail term -- of 45 months -- for aiding and abetting Kurdish rebels thanks to an amnesty law of last December. HADEP members are frequently persecuted for alleged ties to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has waged a 15-year war for self-rule in southeast Turkey with the conflict claiming some 36,500 lives. HADEP itself risks being banned in a case still to come before the coirts in which it is accused of alleged association with the PKK. The party, which campaigns for Kurdish cultural freedoms, has denied the charges. -- Press Agency Ozgurluk In Support of the Revolutionary Peoples Liberation Struggle in Turkey http://www.ozgurluk.org _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki Phone +358-40-7177941 Fax +358-9-7591081 http://www.kominf.pp.fi General class struggle news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe mails to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Geopolitical news: [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] __________________________________________________
