The Asrin Law Office said in a statement on Saturday that for two years they had not received any news from their clients in Turkey’s İmralı Island Prison, including the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Abdullah Öcalan.
The statement expressed concerns about the health conditions and legal status of Öcalan, as well as his fellow three inmates, who have been held incommunicado for an extended period.
“During two years, although 274 applications for lawyers visits and 118 applications for family visits were made to Bursa Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office and İmrali Island Prison Directorate, no results could be achieved,” the statement said, adding that all judicial and administrative applications submitted to all relevant judicial bodies in Turkey have also been inconclusive.
“With their decisions, the judiciary organs once again showed that instead of protecting the rights of our clients and putting an end to illegal practices, they constituted another pillar of the isolation by allowing the isolation in Imrali to continue at torturous and inhumane levels,” Öcalan’s lawyers said.
The lawyers made an application to the United Nations Human Rights Committee with a request for measures to put an end to the absolute incommunicado detention in İmralı. The Committee accepted the request, and in September 2022, it ordered the Turkish government to “put an end to the incommunicado detention of the applicants and provide them with immediate and unrestricted access to a lawyer of their choice.” However, the Turkish government ignored the order and maintained the obstacles on lawyer and family visits to İmralı Prison.
“The precautionary decisions of the United Nations Human Rights Committee should be implemented immediately and it should be ensured that all the rights of the clients arising from legal and international agreements, especially lawyer visits, are respected,” the Asrın Law Firm said.
“With this awareness and expectation, we invite the democratic public to high sensitivity,” it added.
Lawyer Raziye Öztürk from the Asrın Law Office on Friday provided a more detailed account of the rights violations in the prison island during an interview with Medya News.
