from BBC on Kurdish issues

Kurd MPs' conviction challenged
A Turkish prosecutor has called for the 15-year jail sentence of a leading Kurdish rights campaigner and three of her fellow former MPs to be overturned.
Leyla Zana and her colleagues have been in prison since 1994, convicted of belonging to outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).
The case was reopened last year after the European Court of Human Rights ruled the original trial was unfair. A court ruled in April that the four should stay in prison.
But the prosecutor said the conviction should be quashed because witnesses called to give evidence in the original trial had not been called for the re-trial.
The news came as Ankara's state broadcaster prepared to begin transmissions in Turkey's two main Kurdish dialects. This follows the lifting of a ban on broadcasting and teaching in minority languages in 2002.

TV and radio broadcasts in Bosnian began on Monday, and Arabic and Circassian broadcasts are also being prepared.

EU pressure
The European Commission is to issue a report in October on whether Turkey is ready to start EU entry talks. It has suggested that the most recent verdict on the four Kurds could hinder Turkey's chances. Zana and her co-defendants - Orhan Dogan, Hatip Dicle and Selim Sadak - have already served 10 years in jail.
Mr Alatas (Zana's lawyer) praised the prosecutor's move, saying it had been taken from a legal rather than political standpoint.

"This is a very positive step for Turkish justice,"
Zana's lawyer Yusuf Alatas

Mr Alatas had described the April re-trial as being as unfair as the original, and the four former MPs boycotted it.
Zana became a high-profile dissident when she was awarded the European Parliament's Sakharov Peace Prize in 1995 - a year after her conviction in Turkey.
She rocketed to prominence in Turkey in 1991, when she spoke in Kurdish during her oath of allegiance to parliament.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3784271.stm

<<