Public Radio of Armenia. A court in Turkey has sentenced a prominent Kurdish opposition figure to 22 years in prison on terror charges, the BBC reports.
Leyla Güven, of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), was convicted of membership of a terrorist group.
The former MP was stripped of her parliamentary immunity in June. She was not in court for the ruling and a warrant for her arrest has been issued, Turkish media reported.
The HDP said it would appeal against the sentence.
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It described it as “a hostile act against all Kurds and the entire opposition”.
Güven, 56, was an MP for the HDP and the co-leader of the Democratic Society Congress – an assembly of representatives from civil society organizations, political parties, lawyers and human rights defenders.
Güven was detained in 2018 following critical remarks about Turkey’s military operation in the predominantly Kurdish town of Afrin in northern Syria. She had labelled the military operation against a Syrian Kurdish armed group as “an invasion”.
While in detention she went on hunger strike over the prison conditions of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan, who has been in a high-security jail in Turkey since 1999.
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