Former Kurdish parliamentarian found guilty of links to PKK
Ankara - A Turkish court on Thursday sentenced Leyla Zana, a former parliamentarian and winner of the European Parliament's 1995 Sakharov Peace Prize, to 10 years imprisonment after finding her guilty of belonging to a terrorist group, the Anadolu news agency reported.
The court in the south-eastern city of Diyarbakir ruled that a number of speeches she has made in the few years proved that Zana was a member of the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) and had spread "terrorist propaganda".
Zana and three other Kurdish former members of parliament were imprisoned in 1994 after being found guilty of a terrorist organization in a trial that human rights groups complained was unfair and with the convictions based on witness statements allegedly obtained under torture.
In 2001 the European Court of Human Rights ordered a retrial that eventually took place in 2004 again finding the four guilty. After almost 10 years in prison the four were released when an appeals court prosecutor called for another retrial and for the convictions to be quashed on a technicality.
In 2007 the four were again found guilty but sentenced to time served.
Ankara blames the separatist PKK for the deaths of more than 35,000 people since the early 1980s when the PKK began its fight for independence or autonomy for the mainly Kurdish-populated south-east of Turkey.
The PKK is considered by the United States and the European Union to be a terrorist group. (dpa)