Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan has been poisoned in jail in Turkey, his lawyers said Thursday, demanding the United Nations dispatch a medical team to investigate. Ocalan's defence team showed reporters in the Italian capital the results of tests indicating the presence of what they said were toxic metals in the Kurdish leader's hair. | Long term heavy metal poisoning, how medieval of them |
Italian lawyer Giuliano Pisapia said Ocalan was suffering a "progressive poisoning" and ruled out the possibility that the metals had entered his body naturally. "There are only two other possibilities -- poisoning through his food or through his water," he told a press conference. Lawyer Mahmut Sakar called on the United Nations and the Council of Europe to send an "independent medical delegation" to examine the PKK chief.
The defence team said they had sent unidentified hair samples to French toxicologist Pascal Kintz, who found levels of chromium seven times higher than normal, as well as high levels of strontium. His analysis was confirmed by laboratories in Oslo and Rome, the lawyers said.
| Chromium poisoning, eh? Better get Erin Brockovich on the case! |
Ocalan is the head of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been fighting an armed separatist campaign against Ankara since 1984. He has been in jail in Turkey since 1999. The PKK is blacklisted as a terror group by Turkey, the European Union and the United States, but to many among the large Kurdish minority in Turkey its members are fredom fighters.
The Turkish justice ministry said it had ordered an investigation into the poisoning allegations, even though it played down the claims as an attempt to revive international interest in Ocalan.
The rebel leader has not been found to be in ill health, it said in a statement. He is the only inmate at a prison on the remote northwestern island of Imrali. "Abdullah Ocalan benefits from all rights that people sentenced to life in prison are given in our country," the statement said. "He regularly undergoes medical check-ups. He has suffered from no serious health problem so far."
The European Court of Human Rights, a body of the Council of Europe, ruled in May 2005 that Ocalan's trial was unfair and ordered a retrial. No retrial was held and the Council of Europe last month decided the matter was closed. Ocalan was originally sentenced to death for his separatist campaign but this was commuted to life in 2002. Fighting between the PKK and Turkish security forces has killed more than 37,000 people since 1984.