Death Sentences Given to 25 Kurdish Dissidents in Turkey
A military court Tuesday sentenced 25 Kurds to death and 25 others to life imprisonment for killing 168 people, the Hurriyet news agency reported.
They were among 564 Kurds who were brought to a mass trial in connection with a series of slayings, bombings, arson attacks and holdups in southeastern Turkey.
The court ended the trial by giving 230 defendants jail terms ranging from one to 24 years and acquitting 284 others, the dispatch said.
The defendants belonged to the outlawed Apocular group, also known as the Kurdish Labor Party, which has been accused of trying to set up a separate Kurdish state in southeastern Turkey.
The defendants were convicted of killing 168 people in Adana, Gaziantep, Kahramanmaras and Icel provinces before and after Turkey’s 1980 military takeover, the news agency said.
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