Turkish court rejects request for Kurdish leader retrial

           
A Turkish court, specializing in human rights issues, overruled a request demanding a retrial for jailed Kurd leader Abdullah Ocalan under legal reforms that took effect in April, according to the news website Bianet.            

The request was rejected by a majority of the court’s judges; one week after Ocalan’s lawyers demanded a retrial and the suspension of his sentence.                        

One of his lawyers, Rezan Sarica, told AFP that the new legal reforms allow “a new trial for all those convicted who could not be retried under the old law.”                

The 64-year-old founder of the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was captured in February 1999 and sentenced to death two months later as the head of a terrorist organization.                

The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2002 when Turkey abolished the death penalty.                      

Ocalan has been in negotiations since late 2012 with Turkish authorities for an end to the Kurdish conflict, which has cost some 45,000 lives since 1984.