KurdistanObserver.com

Turkish Journalists Charged With Helping Kurd Rebels
Jan 3, 2006
 
ANKARA (Reuters) - Turkish state prosecutors on Monday charged nine people, including a journalist who works for Reuters news agency, with spreading propaganda on behalf of Kurdish separatists.

If found guilty the nine, who include other journalists and human rights activists, face up to three years in jail.

Turkish national Ferit Demir, a stringer for Reuters based in the eastern town of Tunceli, was detained last August when he observed the handover of a soldier abducted by Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) rebels to representatives of a human rights group.

He and the other men were then freed pending investigations.

Journalists have often fallen foul of Turkish authorities over coverage of a conflict in the southeast that has cost some 30,000 lives. A government pursuing European Union entry has eased curbs on the media and on Kurdish language and culture, but the judiciary remains a conservative force.

In its indictment, the Tunceli prosecutor's office accused the nine of using the kidnapped soldier to promote the cause of the PKK, which has waged an armed struggle against Turkish security forces in the impoverished southeast since 1984.

Demir denied the accusations.

"It is absolutely out of the question that I conducted PKK propaganda. I was only doing my job as a journalist," he said.

The prosecutors set March 3 as the date for the first hearing in the trial.

PKK rebels held the soldier captive for nearly four weeks in a remote region of the southeast before releasing him.

Turkey blames the PKK, classified by the United States as a terrorist organisation, for the deaths and economic damage inflicted on the region over two decades. Violence eased after the 1999 capture of rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan but has grown again since PKK ended a five-year unilateral cease-fire in 2004.