Turkey prosecutor demands 20 years imprisonment for Leyla Zana
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) - A Turkish prosecutor in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir on Wednesday asked for 20 years imprisonment for the iconic politician and Sakharov Laureate Leyla Zana.
Charges Zana was to face at a local court were "membership in a terrorist organization, refusal to disperse when ordered to do so during unarmed attendance in assemblies and marches against the law, and praising a crime and a criminal," said Kurdistan24 Diyarbakir Bureau.
The indictment alleged Zana who represents the Kurdish city of Agri at the Turkish Parliament was supportive of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) that has been waging a decades-long guerrilla warfare against the Turkish troops over government repression of cultural rights and political demands of the Kurds.
Zana, also a former Nobel Peace Prize nominee, was also accused of disseminating propaganda on behalf of the PKK and acting under orders from the armed group's jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan.
A victory sign Zana made during the then banned 2012 Kurdish New Year of Newroz and International Women's Day, as well as her attendance in funerals held for slain PKK fighters, were shreds of evidence she was committing crimes, according to the prosecutor.
Turkish police already, albeit briefly, detained Zana in early February in another probe against the lawmaker who cannot carry out her tasks at the Parliament as the Speaker deemed her 2015 swearing-in with the Kurdish phrase "Bijî Aştî" or "long live the peace" as null.
Zana, a member of the second largest opposition block Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), refused to retake the oath, as the Turkish Parliament's management emptied her room there and sacked her advisors as well as secretaries.
Her alteration of the official oath was reminiscent of her first term as an MP of the 1991 ceremony during which she wore a headband with the three colors of green, red and yellow found in the flag of Kurdistan.
Turkey previously incarcerated Zana in 1994 for "treason" over a speech she gave during a visit to the United States back then, only to release after ten years.
Zana's current case is a part of an ongoing government clampdown on the Kurdish politics, HDP Co-leaders Selahattin Demirtas, Figen Yuksekdag, 11 other lawmakers, more than 80 mayors and some seven thousand politicians remain in prisons across Turkey.
Editing by Ava Homa