In an urgent appeal to the Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), the Asrın Law Office stated that concerns regarding the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party’s (PKK) Abdullah Öcalan have reached a critical level, and warned that “tomorrow might be too late.”
Stressing the need for the committee to go beyond its routine visiting schedule, the Asrın Law Office has made an urgent call for the CPT to visit İmralı Island without delay.
The application was lodged on behalf of their clients, Öcalan and the three other prisoners held on İmrali Island, Ömer Hayri Konar, Hamili Yıldırım and Veysi Aktaş, who have been held in incommunicado detention for 30 months.
In the application, the law office highlighted that legal and family visits were being unlawfully, continuously and systematically blocked. The right to make phone calls was being denied on various vague pretexts, and communication via letter was also being prevented.
“The applicants are being held in a state of complete and absolute isolation, with all connection and any form of communicationt with the outside world completely severed,” said the lawyers. It was also noted that 25 requests for legal visits and 12 requests for family visits made between 30 April and 31 July 2023, had received no response, and they reported the imposition of further disciplinary penalties with absolutely no legal basis during the same period.
The Asrın Law Office emphasised that these disciplinary measures were an attempt to over up the arbitrary nature of the rejections to the applications for family and legal visits, and highlighted their view that the obstruction of legal visits was politically motivated.
The lawyers recalled the arrest of journalist Merdan Yanardağ, who had drawn public attention to the issue of the isolation practices at İmralı Prison. They stressed that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government had failed to implement the recommendations of the CPT, that they were defending the lawlessness [applied at the prison], and were attempting to turn the situation to their own political advantage.
