Europe human rights court calls on Turkey to release Demirtas
Europe’s top human rights court ruled Wednesday for the "immediate release" of Selahattin Demirtas, former co-chair of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), who has been imprisoned for more than four years in Turkey on terror-related charges.
ISTANBUL — The Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled Wednesday for "immediate release" of a prominent Kurdish politician in Turkey, stating his more than four-year imprisonment was a violation of his rights and served to hinder democratic pluralism in the country.
In the judgment, the Chamber ruled Selahattin Demirtas, former co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), has been held in pre-trial detention since November 2016 without sufficient evidence to uphold the terror-related charges lodged against him by Turkish courts.
“The reasons put forward by the authorities for the applicant’s pre-trial detention had merely been cover for an ulterior political purpose, which was a matter of indisputable gravity for democracy,” the Chamber concluded in its statement.
Demirtas faces 142 years in prison for alleged membership in the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Kurdish militant group that has fought the Turkish state since 1984 and is a designated terror organization in Turkey, the European Union and the United States.
