ANKARA - Ankara State Security Court (DGM) no:1 started on Friday to retry former deputies Leyla Zana, Hatip Dicle, Orhan Dogan and Selim Sadak of outlawed Democracy Party (DEP).
Zana, Dicle, Dogan and Sadak, and their lawyers attended the hearing which started at 10 a.m.
Police took intense measures in and around the Ankara DGM building.
In addition to a number of reporters, Parliamentary Human Rights Monitoring Commission Chairman Mehmet Elkatmis and some members of the commission, three members of the European Parliament, Human Rights Association Chairman Husnu Ondul, banned People's Democracy Party (HADEP) former leaders Murat Bozlak and Ahmet Turan Demir, and relatives of those DEP deputies are following the hearing.
When the Law on Amendments to Several Laws was published in the Official Gazette on February 2, 2003, lawyers of these former deputies who are staying in prison requested retrial, and the court accepted their request.
Under the case which is publicly known as ''DEP Case'', the Ankara DGM no:1 sentenced Dicle, Zana, Dogan and Sadak to 15 years in prison under Article 5 of the Law on Fight Against Terrorism and relevant articles of the Turkish Penal Code on charges of ''being members of illegal organization and carrying out intense separatist acts with the instructions they got from the head of the terrorist PKK organization''.
Outlawed DEP deputies Zana, Dogan and Dicle were detained on March 4, 1994, and they were arrested and sent to Ankara Prison on March 17, 1994. Meanwhile, Sadak was detained on July 1, 1994 and arrested on July 12, 1994.
Former DEP deputies applied to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in 1996 claiming that Turkey violated European Convention on Human Rights articles 6, 10, 11 and 14.
In July of 2001, the ECHR finalized the application and announced that Article 6 of the convention had been violated, and decided that Turkey should pay 25 thousand U.S. dollars in compensation to each of complainants and 10 thousand U.S. dollars in costs.
(MS-AÖ) 28.03.2003