Turkey preventing visits to jailed Kurdish leader: lawyer
ANKARA, Nov 3 (AFP) - Turkish authorities have
not allowed lawyers for jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan to visit him
for several weeks, one of his defence team told AFP Thursday.
"For weeks we have not been able to visit our client," said Aysel Tugluk.
Ocalan, who heads the outlawed Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), is serving a life
sentence on the north-western island of Imrali for "separatism" and "treason".
The authorities "gave excuses like bad weather" to turn down requests to
visit Imrali by boat, the only means of access to the island where Ocalan is the
sole prisoner, Tugluk said.
Lawyers have not visited him since June 1.
At first the lawyers refused to visit the prison island, complaining of
"anti-democratic" practices after the Turkish authorities recorded one of their
meetings with Ocalan under a new penal code.
"But (then) we decided to talk to our client to discuss his defence," Tugluk
said.
Ocalan's sister and brother were able to visit him Wednesday for the first
time in more than two months, the lawyer added.
The rebel leader, captured in 1999, is officially allowed an hour's audience
a week with a team of lawyers.
On May 12 the European Court of Human Rights said Ocalan had not received a
fair trial in Turkey and called on Ankara to hold a fresh trial.
However Ocalan has said, through his lawyers, that he will not agree to a new
trial in Turkey, where impartiality cannot be assured.
