After the prison sentences for an elderly Kurdish couple, 80 year-old Makbule Özer and her 79 year-old husband Hadi Özer, were upheld by the Turkish high appeals court, they were incarcerated in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority province of Van (Wan), Jin News reported on Monday.
The couple were found guilty of charges in regards to ‘aiding a terrorist group’, and were sentenced to 25 months in prison each.
The couple were among seven individuals who were taken into custody after a raid in Özer’s house in July 2018.
Family members had told reporters that there were a total of 17, with four children among them, in the house during the police raid, and that a woman named Şükran Yıldız was tortured for three hours in front of the children.
The lawyer for the family, Dilan Kunt Ayan, applied to the office of sentence execution in Van for home incarceration, drawing attention to the ages of the couple and to the 52 percent disability of Makbule Özer, but the application was rejected.
Journalist Ferda Çetin, wrote in protest on Twitter:
“Prison sentences on charges of ‘aiding a group’ of 78-year-old Makbule Özer and her husband, 80-year-old Hadi Özer, were upheld by the high court of appeals, and they were arrested in Van’s Edremit district. The judges of this state gang had earlier released 10 Hizbullah members who massacred 23 in Amed.”
It was revealed in a news report on Monday that the 10 individuals, allegedly members of the illegal Hizbullah group in Diyarbakır (Amed), and who were found guilty of killing 23 and injuring 22, were released in 2019 for re-trial.
