Six years wanted for pro-Kurdish MP over 'insulting' Erdogan

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) - A Turkish prosecutor in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir on Monday demanded a prison sentence of up to six years for Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) lawmaker Ziya Pir over alleged insults to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as well as a state-appointed bureaucrat who replaced the jailed co-mayors of the city.

In a criminal file against Pir, the chief public prosecutor also demanded from Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)-dominated Parliament to strip his immunity as an MP from prosecution.

A speech Pir gave in the run-up to a controversial referendum in April on extending President's powers led to the indictment, reported Kurdistan 24's Diyarbakir bureau.

Erdogan rose victorious by narrowly winning 51 percent of votes from across Turkey, a result initially contested by opposition parties.

HDP is already under a massive state crackdown that began in October 2016 with the arrests en masse of its co-leaders Selahattin Demirtas and a dozen other MPs during night raids on their homes.

Pir was among the first detained, though unlike the now 13 month-long pre-trial imprisonments of Demirtas and others, his arrest lasted short.

However, he has been arrested and interrogated multiple times since then.

An ethnic Laz with origins in the northern Black Sea Region, Pir also serves as the vice-president of a sub-committee at the NATO Parliamentary Assembly.

"At least you could have sent someone sane," the Diyarbakir representative had said about the trustee Cumali Atilla whom the Interior Ministry appointed to run municipal affairs after the purge and arrest of the elected co-mayors Gultan Kisanak and Firat Anli.

Prosecutor's office alleged that Pir's words "hurt the bureaucrat's honor and dignity."

Editing by Sam A.