Armenian, Assyrian and Hellenic Genocide News

Turkish rights veteran faces jail over Armenian genocide remarks Ankara
by Deutsche Presse-Agentur
Posted: Wednesday, October 25, 2000 10:01 pm CST

A prosecutor in Istanbul on Monday opened an investigation into a speech made by veteran human rights campaigner Akin Birdal in which he called for Turkey to apologise for the genocide of Armenians during and after the First World War.

The Anadolu news agency reported that Birdal made the call at a human rights conference in the German city of Bremerhaven earlier this month.

The prosecutor, who was not named in the report, said he was seeking a jail sentence of between one and three years for Birdal on the charge of "enciting enmity and hate by splitting people along class, race and religious lines".

The investigation comes less than a month after Birdal was released from a Turkish prison having been found guilty of the same charges over a call he made for an end to fighting between the Turkish armed forces and Kurdish separatists in southeast Turkey.

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