Jailed Kurdish lawmaker allowed first family visit in months
Authorities in Turkey on Saturday allowed an imprisoned Kurdish lawmaker to receive a visit from his family for the first time in over three months.
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) – Authorities in Turkey on Saturday allowed an imprisoned Kurdish lawmaker to receive a visit from his family for the first time in over three months.
Pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) member Abdullah Zeydan’s wife Dilsah and his three daughters visited him in a supermax prison in the northwestern city of Edirne where he is being held during his pre-trial detention.
Their meeting lasted about an hour, according to the private-owned Dogan news agency.
The HDP MP was set to be tried via teleconference at a court in the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir on Feb. 3, the agency added.
Police arrested Zeydan along with 12 other HDP lawmakers including the party’s Co-chairs Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag in home raids in various cities on Nov. 4, 2016.
Initially, prison authorities kept Zeydan and Demirtas in solitary cells for about a month, according to HDP Deputy Co-chair Meral Baris Bestas.
In December, a Turkish prosecutor in Zeydan’s home province of Hakkari accused him of “membership in a terror group, disseminating propaganda for it, praising a crime and criminals and organizing illegal protests.”
The indictment filed demanded 20 years of imprisonment for the MP who joined several meetings, walks, and funerals of fallen Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) fighters in 2015 and 2016.
One of the charges brought against him was his attendance at an August 2015 funeral for a US-backed Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) fighter who died battling the Islamic State in Syria.
Prosecutors argued Zeydan’s activities among his constituency “could not be deemed” as political exercise as they were in accordance with orders from the PKK.
Editing by Karzan Sulaivany