About 16,000 Kurds, from Germany, Belgium, Switzerland,...

About 16,000 Kurds, from Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy and Britain demonstrated peacefully in Strasbourg, to demand the release of Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan. Ocalan was sentenced to death in Turkey. He was held responsible for the death of more than 30,000 people since PKK guerrillas took up arms against the state in 1984 for self-rule in southeast Turkey. In January the Turkish coalition government granted him a stay of execution until the European Court of Human Rights ruled on his appeal, which argues that the death penalty breaches European law.