To mark the start of the “Free Öcalan Global Days”, the “Campaign for the Freedom of Abdullah Öcalan: A Political Solution to the Kurdish Question” published a report about the conditions in Imrali prison.
According to the report, “Öcalan’s legal rights are severely restricted—he has only had five lawyer visits since 2011 and five family visits since 2014. His trial was condemned as unfair by human rights groups and international courts. The European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2005 that his trial was neither independent nor impartial.”
The report added that “Prolonged isolation and solitary confinement, both forms of torture under international law and according to the U.N. Mandela Principles, are routine in İmralı. Reports of Öcalan being poisoned in 2007 and mistreated in 2008 were met with no accountability. A European laboratory confirmed the presence of toxic chromium and strontium in hair samples.
In 2008, Öcalan’s lawyers reported that Öcalan had been dragged by prison personnel to an adjoining room and forced to the ground by three people while his cell was ravaged. When he protested against these brutal measures, he was explicitly threatened with death. His life sentence without parole, in effect, reintroduces the death penalty in Turkey and has since been applied to thousands. Critically ill prisoners, almost all of them Kurdish, are dying in Turkish prisons in significant numbers. Isolation is now the established norm, normalized through decrees and disciplinary penalties that are not embedded in the law.”
The report underlined that “Since Öcalan’s abduction, in 1999, numerous legal applications have been filed in Turkey regarding his isolation, but none have been successful. Requests for lawyer and family visits are routinely ignored or denied. Disciplinary penalties have led to automatic bans on visits, with appeals consistently rejected. Since 2021, the judiciary has not only rejected all requests but also obstructed legal processes, making the domestic legal system ineffective for Öcalan and his associates.
Based on these facts, Turkish domestic law appears to be obstructing Öcalan’s rights, using legal processes to justify his isolation and torture. According to ECtHR decisions, Öcalan’s 25-year imprisonment, which began in 1999, has been under unfair conditions considered as torture. International law and justice demand his release, as he has been denied the right to hope.”
Source: ANF News