ISTANBUL, April 18 (AFP) - A Turkish state security court sentenced four members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) to death for separatism on Thursday, Anatolia news agency reported.
The judge convicted the four defendants, among them a woman, under an article which carries the death penalty, for attempts "to extract by force from the state administration a portion of or the entire territory under state sovereignty," Anatolia reported.

The procesution had accused the defendants of involvement in violent acts, including three bomb attacks in Istanbul which claimed four lives, according to Anatolia.

The death sentence remains on the statute books in Turkey, but the country has not carried out executions since 1984 under a de facto moratorium.

Last October, Turkey passed a constitutional amendment that limited capital punishment solely to times of war, imminent threat of war and terrorist crimes as part of democratic reforms aimed at boosting its struggling bid for European Union membership.

Under EU criteria, however, membership candidates are required to totally abolish capital punishment.

The court also sentenced a fifth defendant to 18 years in jail for belonging to a "terrorist organization".

Nine others were acquitted either due to lack of evidence or because their crimes fell under the scope of amnesty regulations, Anatolia reported.

The PKK announced in 1999 that it was ending its 15-year armed struggle for self-rule in the mainly Kurdish southeast to seek a peaceful resolution of the Kurdish conflict, which has claimed about 36,500 lives.

In a follow-up decision last Tuesday, the group said it had ceased all its activities as the PKK and was reorganizing itself under the name of Congress for Freedom and Democracy in Kurdistan (KADEK) as part of a new strategy to campaign for Kurdish freedoms through democratic means.

Ankara played down the announcement, saying it would continue to consider the rebels as "terrorists."