BRUSSELS - The European Union expects Turkey to respect a ruling that Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan was unfairly tried by a Turkish court which sentenced him to death in 1999, a spokesman said on Thursday.
"The European Commission expects that Turkey will respect this decision of the court of human rights. Turkey is a member of the Council of Europe so it is a duty to implement all the decisions of the court," he told reporters.
Earlier on Thursday, the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights said Ocalan's trial in 1999 was unfair and called for a retrial. The court ruling is not binding on the government.
The EU spokeman said that Brussels had noted a very prompt reaction from Turkey saying that it would take action to address the problem.
"We will wait to see how this is implemented," he said.
Ocalan's sentence was commuted to life in prison in 2002, after Turkey scrapped the death penalty in a bid to boost its long bid to join the European Union.
The spokesman would not say whether Ankara's chances of joining the EU would be jeopardised if it did not take sufficient action, but he reiterated that the respect of human rights was a part of Turkey's obligations to the bloc.
05/12/2005 11:39 GMT