A Further 21 Hunger Strikers Released for 6 Months
On 12.10.2001, the Justice Ministry allowed a total of 21 hunger striking prisoners to be conditionally released for 6 months from Turkish prisons because of their poor state of health. Eighteen of these were being held in a high security prison in Edirne and three were from the prison in Kandira. Meanwhile, a total of 40 prisoners have died as a result of the hunger strikes or the consequences of failed intervention. (Sources: afp, 12.10.01; IMK e.V.)

Turkish Court Bans Local Newspaper Because of Kurdish Article
A court has banned a newspaper in the Kurdish town of Batman because of an article written in the Kurdish language. The newspa-per “Batman Dogus” is a Turkish language newspaper which has been in circulation since the beginning of October. The court gave as grounds for its decision a column which had been published in Kurdish, without authorization, over the previous 4 days. According to the news agency Anadolu, a weekly newspaper had also been banned for the same reasons a few days earlier. Newspapers in Kurdish are basically allowed in Turkey. However, the authorities strictly monitor them and they are normally immediately confiscated. Editors, publishers and authors are at risk of prison and financial penalties. (Source: dpa, 12.10.01; IMK e.V.)

Constitutional Amendment Requires Review of Death Sentences
Because of recent constitutional amendments, 61 cases are to be reviewed by a judicial commission in which the death sentence had been served against a total of 177 people. The penalty is to be lifted except for offences involving armed conflict or terrorism. 
The commission has the task of producing a report on the death penalty. If this is accepted by parliament it will then be submitted to the president. Any decision on the death penalty will be made public through official news channels. Files on death sentences have been in possession of the commission since 1984. The death penalty has not been carried out since 
then. The constitutional change requires the review of all death sentences.
Seventeen of the files concern death penalties on 32 people who were sentenced because of  alleged separatist and terrorist activity involving the PKK. Seven files contain 41 death sentences for attempts to “alter the constitutional order through armed aggression”. (Source: Turkish Daily News, 08.10.01)

Sema Piskinsüt Publishes Book on Torture Methods of Security Organisations
A sensation is being caused in Turkey by a 527-page book from Sema Piskinsüt entitled “From Palestinian Hooks to Investigative Reports”. The author, who recently resigned from the DSP and is the former head of the parliamentary human rights commission, writes about the methods of torture used by security organisations based on reports from actual torture victims. 
She points the finger at both the judicial and the security institutions and reveals the type of instruments of torture available in the provinces and the methods of torture being used. (Source: Milliyet, 14.10.01)

AI Urgent Action: Murder Threats Against Cizre’s HADEP Head, Mehmet Dilsiz
Mehmet Dilsiz, a local leader of the lawful pro-Kurdish political party HADEP in Cizre, has been arrested in south eastern Turkey by members of the security forces. Amnesty International are concerned that he may be mistreated or tortured.
Dilsiz was arrested on 02.09.2001 during a raid on his house by soldiers and police in civilian clothing. According to current information, he was then taken for questioning to the gendarmerie headquarters in Sirnak. Since September 2000, he has been persistently harassed and threatened by security forces for attempting to establish a HADEP office in Cizre. He has been arrested several times and told to discontinue his activities for the party. On 06.11.2000 he was to be named as Cizre’s HADEP leader, but this was prevented because of his arrest by gendarmes. The authorities permitted his detention but later released him on bail. The gendarme head of the province threatened to kill Mehmet Dilsiz if he refused to end his work for HADEP. Two other HADEP activists, Serdar Tanis and Ebubekir Deniz, “disappeared” on 25.01.2001 after they had last been seen at a gendarme station in Silopi, a district in the province of Sirnak (see UA 26/01). Three days later, Mehmet Dilsiz apparently received a call telling him that he was at risk of the same fate as Serdar Tanis and Ebubekir Deniz, and that he would “end up in hell”. When he asked with whom he was speaking, the caller said that he was “Serdar and Ebubekir’s angel of death”.
Mehmet Dilsiz and 7 other HADEP members from Cizre had been arrested in April of this year after drugs had been discovered on his cotton fields. Mehmet Dilsiz was detained despite having been forbidden by the gendarmerie from visiting or working on his fields. According to Dilsiz, security forces had planted the drugs. He was eventually released on 12.06.2001. Following a grenade explosion in Cizre’s HADEP offices on 20.09.2001, Amnesty are now concerned for the safety of HADEP members. (Sources: UA 81/01-2 ai-Index: EUR 44/070/2001 ,2nd. October 2001 – Further information on UA 81/01 (EUR 44/020/2001, 02.04.01, and EUR 44/069/2001, 20.09.01) – Complete Urgent Action available on our Homepage at www.kurden.de)

Prime Minister Barham Saleh : “Turkey is very important to us”
In a visit to Washington, the prime minister of the Kurdish regional government, Barham Saleh, made a point of the significance of improved relations with Ankara. Secular and democratic practices within Turkey were very important for the PUK. Saleh further said that they worked in closer cooperation with Turkey against the PKK and that they did not desire the presence of the PKK in their region. (Source: Turkish Daily News, 12.10.01)

Peshmerga Expel Jund AI-Islam  from Halabja
Following heavy skirmishes, Peshmerga defence forces managed to expel the Jund AI-Islam from Halabja and the surrounding mountains. A Peshmerga spokesman confirmed that 28 terrorists were killed and a large number had been arrested. The Afghan Abu Abdulrahman is alleged to be among the dead. He is a high-ranking representative of bin Laden’s, he is associated with the Jund AI-Islam and was the spiritual leader in the plot to murder the KDP head Franso Hariri in Arbil in February of this year. 
According to Nechervan Barzani, a politburo member and prime minister of Arbil’s Kurdish regional government, the KDP provided the PUK with both weapons and financial support in its campaign against the terrorist group. He said that the KDP would not hesitate in joining sides with the PUK to fight against these groups if it was necessary and if the PUK requested such. (Sources: KurdishMedia.com, 09.10.01; Kurdistan Newsline, 12.10.01)
 

Statement from the Islamic Resistance’s Supreme Council on the Bloody Conflict in Kurdistan: We Demand an End to the Violence and Bloodshed in the Region
The office for international affairs from the Supreme Council of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq have issued a statement emphasising that the recent unfortunate conflict in Kurdistan has clouded the positive picture of peaceful cohabitation of the region’s various movements and groupings. The wording of the statement was as follows:
The recent bloody confrontation in Kurdistan between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and a group calling themselves the “Movement of Soldiers of Islam”, is a cause for concern because there is no legitimate or reasonable justification for the bloodshed, the armed conflict, the use of missiles, revenge attacks, mutual violence and other over-reactions. Even if there are differences of opinion amongst the people these should be put aside because the enemy is waiting to infiltrate the unity of the people of Kurdistan.
If we criticise the bloodshed, people’s unrest, the use of violence and the risks to safety and systems that have been established since Kurdistan has no longer been under Baghdad’s control, then we must acknowledge that disruption to internal security, the use of violence, provocation and the spread of terrorism can only be in Baghdad’s favour, whose intentions are to disrupt the self administration and to hinder its development so that they can again achieve sovereignty over the region. Furthermore, the conflict is damaging to the whole of the region’s public sphere of life.
We therefore call for an immediate end to all violence and bloodshed. It is severely damaging the positive image of the peaceful cohabitation of different groups in the region and is only approved of by Islamic elements who tend towards violence and provocative language. In this way, there will be a generalisation of the negative image of all things Islamic and the current situation in Kurdistan. We hope that brotherly relations will soon be restored between the various groups in the region and that the current unfortunate situation in Kurdistan will quickly belong only to the past. (Supreme Council of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq/Vienna and Berlin offices, 09.10.2001)

Saddam Rearms – Biological and Chemical Weapons Tested on Prisoners
The Iraqi president Saddam Hussein has increased his production of biological and chemical weapons. The British newspaper The Sunday Telegraph, on information from an Iraqi atomic physicist, reported that Saddam had instructed his scientists to work exclusively on B and C weapon arsenals. The physicist had participated in the development of the weapons but had fled to the west. The nuclear weapon programme had, however, been suspended because it had become too expensive.
According to the newspaper, over the past 6 months 3 000 physicists and chemists have been working on Iraq’s secret programme on the development of poisons and their usage. The physicist said “I was requested to examine hundreds of complex and dangerous poisons”. For reasons of safety his name has been kept secret. Some of the poisons were “very easy to use to release pathogens. We developed nerve gas, botulism and anthrax”. The expert, who according to reports worked for the atomic energy authority in Baghdad, claimed that the poisons were tested on prisoners, mainly Kurds and Shiite Muslims. The newspaper reported that western secret services had confirmed this. A secret service employee was cited as saying, “Between April and May of this year, 30 prisoners died after having been used for these experiments”. The poisons and pathogens are to be spread using missiles and unmanned aircraft, with work taking place on such programmes. (Sources: FOCUS Politik 2.10.01; Press statement from the Supreme Council of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq)

Danish Police Question Former Iraqi General On His Role in Kurdish Massacres
The Danish Chief of Police, Signe Justesen, has revealed that Danish police have questioned a former Iraqi General living in Denmark as an asylum seeker, on his role in Kurdish massacres from 1987-1989. 
Nizar Al-Khazraji (62), who has been living in Denmark since 1999 as a rejected but tolerated asylum seeker, was recognised on a Copenhagen street by an Iraqi refugee who served under him. He had been living with his family under a different name near Copenhagen. Now that his address is known he fears revenge by Saddam.
The refugee from Kurdish northern Iraq went to the TV broadcaster DR 1 and accused the General of being responsible for the use of chemical weapons in Halabja. The accused denies this. Khazraji let it be known on the Arabic broadcaster MBC that Saddam Hussein and Ali Hassan al-Majid were responsible for the deaths of civilians in northern Iraq.
The Danish state prosecutor has now ordered an investigation into the case with a view to prosecuting the General for war crimes contrary to the Geneva Convention.
According to other sources, following his fleeing from Iraq to Jordan in 1996, General Al-Khazraji and other Iraqi ex-military personnel unsuccessfully attempted to topple Saddam with support from the CIA. Three years later he took flight to Denmark because he no longer felt safe in Jordan.
The Danish-based newspaper Poltiken reported that according to the London-published newspaper Azzaman, 7 people from the Iraqi opposition, amongst them a former General, a minister and an ambassador, had written a letter to the Danish Justice Minister requesting a stop to the investigation. The reason for this appears to be that the Iraqi opposition, particularly the military, consider Nizar Al-Khazraji as a successor to Saddam and fear that the investigation might reduce the number of those distancing themselves from Saddam. Even the KDP representative in London has written a letter claiming Al-Khazraji’s innocence.
However, the Danish state prosecutor does not believe him. They say that Al-Khazraji must have been aware of the chemical massacres because of his high rank and therefore had responsibility for the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians. (Sources: Ekstra Bladet, 02.10.01; afp, 11.10.01; IMK e.V.)

Berlin Settlement with Asylum Seeker at Human Rights Court
Through an amicable settlement, the Federal Republic of Germany has avoided a judgement against it at the European Court of Human Rights. According to the court in Strasbourg, a rejected asylum seeker from Iran, who was to be deported to his homeland, had made the complaint. The government in Berlin had already stated that it was prepared to pay the complainant compensation of 16 000 Deutschmarks. 
The Iranian told the court that as a critic of the regime he was at risk of ill treatment and torture on his return to Iran. But he was informed during the hearing that he would no longer be deported. He therefore withdrew his complaint. (Source, dpa, 11.10.01)

Human Rights Report Issued in September 2001
The Turkish Human Rights Foundation has issued its detailed human rights report for the month of September 2001. It can be ordered under Fax: 90-312-425 45 52; e-mail: tihv@tr.net; www.tihv.org.tr

Dear Readers,
The following articles have been made available for you at our Homepage www.kurden.de:

Ten Years of Kurdish Safety Zones in Northern Iraq
Democracy in the Age of Embargos
Le Monde Diplomatique, 10.8.2001, Kendal Nezan, Head of the Kurdish Institute, Paris.

A Continent on Fire – Why Terrorism is Only a Symptom: FAZ, 28.09.2001, Arundhati Roy

In Consideration of Iraq Four Recommendations from Turkey on Washington’s Military Operations: FAZ, 09.10.2001, Lothar Rühl

 
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