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Paris, July 18th 2003,
Once again, the State Security Court n°1 in Ankara has
decided that the four former Kurdish deputies would remain in
prison and has postponed their trial to August 15th, arguing
that key witnesses still needed to be questioned. It was today
the fifth hearing they had to undergo this year before the Court.
The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) mandated
an observer to the 18 July hearing. The FIDH notices that this
trial is a parody of justice and falls short in respecting the
right of a fair trial set out by the Council of Europe and the
European Union.
In December 1994, Leyla Zana, the 1995 Sakharov Price’s
winner, Selim Sadak, Hadid Dicle and Orhan Dogan were sentenced
to 15 years imprisonment for “membership of an illegal
group”. They were being granted a retrial after nine years
of imprisonment following the European Court of Human Rights
judgment (Sadak and others v. Turkey, 17 July 2001) that ruled
a breach of the right to a fair trial, and the adoption of the
second harmonisation package on 23rd January 2003 by the Turkish
Parliament.
The trial of the former Kurdish deputies is an illustration
of the human rights violations faced by the Kurdish people in
Turkey. This situation is stressed in a FIDH report to be published
by the end of July. The report shows that serious human rights
violations- torture, disappearances, extra-judicial killings
and tremendous obstacles to the return of displaced persons-
continue to be unpunished. Moreover, freedom of expression and
association remain heavily restricted by judicial and public
authorities.
The trial illustrates as well the non-implementation of the
significant legal reforms adopted by Turkey, as underlined by
the report mentioned above. In this context, the FIDH stresses
the urgent need for Turkey to fill the gap between the political
reforms on the one hand and the attitude of the judiciary and
the establishment on the other hand.
The FIDH recalls that Turkey cannot expect to initiate negotiations
on EU accession as long as political prisoners are being detained
and brought before a court in the country and as long as the
judicial system is not reformed in practice.
The FIDH urges as well the Turkish authorities to comply with
the international obligations deriving from the European Convention
of Human Rights and the case law of the European Court of Human
Rights, and to guarantee the four former Kurdish deputies a
fair trial.
The FIDH calls for the immediate release of the four Kurdish
deputies in the absence of valid reasons for delaying the trial.
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