An appeals chamber in Turkey has reversed the prison sentences of the imprisoned former Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) MP and co-chair of the Democratic Society Congress (DTK) Leyla Güven on the grounds that “unlawful evidence was obtained”, Mezopotamya Agency reported.
Güven, former mayor of the Viranşehir (Wêranşar) district of Turkey’s southeastern province of Urfa (Riha), was detained in Adana as part of a series of investigations and arrests targeting mostly Kurdish political figures with the charge of being a member of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), popularly known as the KCK operations, in 2009.
On December 2019, a court sentenced Güven and 26 other people to 6 years and 3 months in prison each.
The lawyers of those sentenced to prison applied for the reversal of the decision on the grounds that the evidence used in the case was obtained unlawfully.
The chamber overturned the local court’s decision on Friday, ruling a retrial, citing the audio recordings shown as evidence in the file were taken without a court order and were unlawful.