Turkish Court Hands Over 22-Year Prison Sentence to Kurdish Former Lawmaker
A court in Turkey sentenced a Kurdish former lawmaker to over 22 years in prison on terror-related charges.
Leyla Guven, 56, who was stripped of her parliamentary immunity in June, was convicted of membership in a terror group and disseminating terror propaganda for outlawed Kurdish militants, AFP reported. She had been elected to the parliament in June 2018 while in prison after her arrest criticizing a Turkish military operation targeting a Syrian Kurdish militia group. While in prison she went on a 200-day hunger strike to secure visitation rights for family and attorneys for jailed Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, who is serving a life sentence for treason.
She was released from prison on a supervised release in January 2019 and in July 2019 she entered country’s parliament, the Grand National Assembly. She has been investigated for promoting terrorist propaganda since 2019. She was dismissed from the parliament and stripped of her immunity in June.
On Monday she was sentenced in court in the predominantly Kurdish southeastern city of Diyarbakir to 14 years and three months in jail for membership in a “terrorist organization” and another eight years on two separate charges of disseminating “terrorist propaganda,” Al Jazeera reported.
