A local court in Istanbul has sentenced 39 people to life in prison in a case that started 28 years ago in the aftermath of the Sept. 12, 1980 military coup.
The case was publicly known as the "Dev-Sol case" because those on trial were from the outlawed far-left Dev-Sol, or Revolutionary Left, organization. The case broke many records as 1,243 suspects were put on trial, according to daily Milliyet.
The allegations against the other 1,203 suspects were dropped due to the end of the statute of limitations. Dursun Karataş, one of the suspects and the leader of Dev-Sol's continuation, the outlawed Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front, or DHKP-C, later died of cancer.
"We are going to appeal the case," said Taylan Tanay, a lawyer for some of the suspects, adding that they would also call for those against whom allegations were dropped to be exonerated.
"They have the right to be cleared of all allegations," Tanay said, adding that the case was opened during the military coup period, meaning that the only investigation method was torture.
The life sentence translates to eight years in prison in Turkey for these types of crimes, according to the first temporary article of the terrorism law. Many of the 39 people who were sentenced to life in prison have already spent eight years or more in jail, so the court did not order their arrest.
There are only a few people who remained in prison for less than eight years since the 1980s, Tanay said, yet there are people among them who were not even informed about the continuing case against them.
Tanay said he did not expect the appeal to be concluded in a short time. "Even just sending the files would take a long time," he said. The case has 400 files, of which 100 have been lost, Tanay said.
Twenty people being judged in the case applied to the European Court of Human Rights on the complaint that their right to be tried fairly was violated.
Another legal proceeding that began during the military coup period was publicly known as the "Dev-Yol case." That trial started with 574 suspects but 723 people were eventually brought to court.