The second hearing of the Kobani case was held in the Ankara Sincan Prison Campus.
Lawyers criticised the judge for not scrutinising the case file, as well as for only adding the sixth paragraph of the ECtHR decision to the record. They also criticised the presence of snipers on top of the building where the hearing was held. They requested the judge’s recusation, which was denied.
Afterwards, the judge read the Turkish version of the HDP politicians’ statements. The politicians had given their defence in Kurdish in the previous session of the hearing. The court made the decision to postpone to 14 June without the opinion of the prosecution. The detention of the HDP politicians continues.
108 current and former Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) members – 28 of whom are already in prison, including former co-chairs Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ – are on trial over the Kobani case. All 108 HDP members are being charged with the responsibility for the deaths that occurred during the 6-8 October 2014 protests against the ISIS siege in the Syrian-Kurdish town of Kobani. Prosecutors are seeking multiple life sentences and thousands of years in prison.
