TURKEY. OCALAN KURDISH REBEL LEADER DEMANDS RETRIAL IN TURKEY

jailed Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan formally asked to be retried in Turkey after the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled in 2005 that his trial had been unfair, one of his lawyers, Ibrahim Bilmez, said. Ocalan, 57, who launched a bloody Kurdish rebellion in southeast Turkey in 1984, was condemned to death in 1999 for treason, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2002 after Turkey abolished capital punishment as part of efforts to align with European Union democracy norms.
Ocalan's demand posed a legal challenge to the government because current laws did not allow for his retrial, but Ankara was under pressure to comply with the rulings of the ECHR, Bilmez said.
"They will have to amend the laws," he said. Recommending a retrial, the ECHR ruled in May that the Turkish court that convicted Ocalan was not impartial because it included a military judge during part of the trial and because Ocalan and his lawyers were denied the required time and facilities to prepare their defense.