STRASBOURG, Feb 16 (AFP)  Several thousand Kurds on Saturday marched through the streets of this eastern French city, demanding that Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan be freed from a Turkish prison.
The demonstrators -- 6,000 according to police, 8,000 according to organizers -- cried "Freedom for Ocalan" as they marched through Strasbourg to mark the third anniversary of his capture in Kenya.

A huge portrait of Ocalan was carried by demonstrators, some of whom sported red and yellow bandanas -- the colors of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which Ocalan leads.

Protesters came from Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland for the demonstration organized by a Strasbourg-based Kurdish cultural association, along with Kurdish associations in other countries.

"It's thanks to a plot, notably implicating Turkey, Germany, Greece and Kenya, that Ocalan was arrested three years ago," said Fidan Dogan, a spokeswoman for protest organizers.

Turkish agents captured Ocalan in the Kenyan capital Nairobi on February 15, 1999 after he left his refuge in Greek diplomatic compounds there, and brought him to Turkey the following day.

Ocalan was condemned to death in June 1999 for treason, but Ankara suspended the execution of the sentence until the European Court of Human Rights rules on his complaints against Turkey.

Heeding Ocalan's peace appeals, the PKK announced in September the same year it was ending its armed struggle for Kurdish self-rule in southeast Turkey to seek a democratic resolution to the Kurdish conflict, which has claimed some 36,500 lives since 1984.