SULAIMANI (ESTA) — The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) said a Turkish court handed another jail sentence to imprisoned political leader Selahattin Demirtas on Friday.
The HDP said in a statement that a court in Ankara sentenced Demirtas to two years and six months for making statements considered threatening against a prosecutor, according to AFP.
Demirtas, who has been in jail since 2016, said last year that the prosecutor would be held “accountable before the law”, AFP reported.
Before his conviction, Demirtas told the court on Friday that “no crime has been committed”, the HDP’s transcript read.
The former HDP co-leader faces a sentence of up to 142 years in prison if convicted of being the leader of a “terrorist organization” over his speeches during protests in 2014 that turned violent and led to 37 deaths. He denies any wrongdoing.
Demirtas received a 3.5-year sentence earlier this year for insulting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and was convicted of disseminating terror propaganda in 2018.
Turkey accuses the HDP of links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has waged an insurgency in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish southeast since 1984 and is deemed a terrorist group by Turkey, the European Union and the United States.
The HDP, the third-largest in Turkey’s parliament, denies links to terrorism, yet has seen thousands of its officials and members arrested in recent years, mainly on terrorism charges.
The party, which won 11.7% support in a 2018 general election, has come under increasing pressure from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AK Party (AKP) and its Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) allies in recent years.
In March, a top prosecutor had filed a lawsuit demanding a ban on the HDP for alleged ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), as well as a five-year political ban on more than 600 members of the party.
The indictment was sent back on procedural grounds but can be re-submitted. The HDP denies the charges.
