Kurd protest disrupts European Parliament

Around a dozen Kurdish activists launched a protest on Wednesday in the European Parliament on the 24th anniversary of Turkey’s arrest of their revered leader Abdullah Ocalan.

The debate session was halted and MEPs left the chamber as the protesters brandished banners bearing Ocalan’s image and shouted slogans hostile to Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

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“They are pro-PKK activists,” MEP Bernard Guetta told AFP, referring to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), banned in Turkey and blacklisted as a terrorist organization in the EU.

Guetta said the protesters were on an upper deck above the Strasbourg chamber, some sitting on a balustrade and dangling their legs above the parliament’s floor.

Ocalan is the best-known leader of Kurdish rebellion in Turkey, but was arrested in Kenya by Turkish agents on February 15, 1999 and sentenced to death in June of the same year.

Now 73, his sentence was reduced to life in prison in 2002 and supporters continue to demand his release.

Last week, PKK militants still fighting in Turkey announced a temporary halt to their operations during rescue work after the massive earthquake that struck southeastern Turkey and parts of Syria.

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