Turkey defends prison conditions of Kurdish leader

(AFP) - Dec. 4, 2009

ANKARA - The Turkish prison conditions of Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah
Ocalan meet international standards, the head of a parliamentary commission
insisted Friday, after complaints from the jailed leader.

"We carried out an inquiry and have established that it is not true that
Ocalan is treated differently to other inmates," Zafer Uskul, president of
the parliamentary human rights commission, told television channel NTV.

"His conditions meet international norms and are even better."

Turkey's justice ministry also published photos on Friday to show that
Ocalan's jail conditions were the same as those of other inmates in
high-security prisons.

Reports last weekend that he had complained about conditions following the
transfer of five other inmates to the prison triggered daily protests across
Turkey.

The 61-year-old founder of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), who
is serving a life sentence on Imrali island, said his breathing had been
affected after he was placed in a much smaller cell.

He had been the sole inmate of the high-security prison until the new
prisoners arrived in mid-November.

Uskul dismissed the claim that the new cell was much smaller.

The new inmates were brought to the prison in the Sea of Marmara,
northwestern Turkey, after Council of Europe criticism that Ankara was
violating Ocalan's human rights by keeping him in solitary confinement.

He was condemned to death for treason and separatism in 1999.

The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2001 following Turkey's
abolition of capital punishment as part of reforms to embrace European Union
norms.

The PKK is listed as a terrorist group by Turkey and much of the
international community. It took up arms in Turkey's mainly Kurdish
southeast in 1984, sparking a conflict that has claimed about 45,000 lives.

Meanwhile in the southern Turkish city of Adana, which has a large Kurdish
community, two men suffered minor injuries on Friday when a bomb exploded
close to a park, media reported.

The 25- and 28-year-old were taken to hospital but were not in a serious
condition, Anatolia news agency said.