Turkey sends Kurdish lawmaker to prison two days after release

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan24) - A Turkish court on Friday remanded pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic lawmaker Ferhat Encu to prison again only two days after being released from a months-long pre-trial detention.

Police detained Encu in the Kurdish town of Cizre, in his home province of Sirnak which he represents at the Turkish Parliament, said Kurdistan24's Diyarbakir Bureau.

Encu's arrest was a part of an ongoing probe against him in which a prosecutor was demanding 22 years of imprisonment on the charges of "membership in a terror group and disseminating propaganda on behalf of it."

A court in Sirnak had decided the release of Encu on Wednesday, as it said his trial could continue without ongoing detention.

Police had arrested Encu alongside the HDP's co-chairs Selahattin Demirtas, Figen Yuksekdag and nine other lawmakers during night raids on their houses in several provinces in November 2016.

The MP who represents his home province of Sirnak at the Turkish Parliament had since been held in pre-trial detention at the Kandira prison in the city of Kocaeli, east of Istanbul.

With Encu's detention, the number of HDP MPs currently in prison rose to 12 again in Turkey's clampdown on Kurdish political parties that has seen thousands of members and officials jailed.

Encu got into politics after Turkish warplanes killed 11 of his relatives including one of his brothers with 22 others, most of them children in a deadly air assault in late 2011 near the village of Roboski in Sirnak on the border with the Kurdistan Region.

Meanwhile in Diyarbakir and Adiyaman courts issued arrest warrants for the HDP MPs Idris Baluken and Behcet Yildirim.

Baluken who is head of HDP’s parliamentary group was released at then end of last month.

Editing by Ava Homa