LONDON'S Green Party Euro-MP Jean Lambert has called for the immediate release of a Turkish National Assembly member jailed with three colleagues for 15 years - simply for speaking Kurdish.
She condemned the continued imprisonment of one of the first Kurdish women to enter the Turkish National Assembly after a retrial of the case upheld her conviction and prison sentence.
Leyla Zana, winner of the European
Parliament's Sakharov Peace Prize in 1995, was sentenced to 15 years' in prison
in 1994 for speaking in Kurdish during her inauguration as an assembly member
three years earlier. The offending words were: "I take this oath in the name
of fraternity between
the Turkish and Kurdish peoples".
Her imprisonment sparked an international outcry and a challenge to the European Court of Human Rights, which in July 2001 ruled that Turkey had breached Article 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights by denying Zana her right to a fair trial.
But it was announced this week that a retrial in the Turkish State Security Court, called after judicial reforms incorporated the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights into Turkish Law in 2003, upheld the conviction against Zana and three others: Orhan Dogan, Selim Sadak and Hatip Dicle.
Mrs Lambert, who is a member of the European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee, said: "This decision is an appalling violation of the right to a fair trail as guaranteed in international law - and an unacceptable slap in the face of the European Court of Human Rights.
"Zana and her colleagues must be released immediately and the Turkish Court of Appeal must bring an end to this repeated miscarriage of justice once and for all."
ENDS
Editors' Note: Background
information on the case can be found at http://www.amnestyusa.org/action/special/zana.html
For more information please contact Ben or Katy on 020 7407 6280, 07973 823358 or at press@greenmeps.org.uk