A court in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır on Friday ordered the re-arrest of Leyla Güven, a deputy of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), after another court had ruled for her release earlier in the day.
The 9th High Criminal Court in Diyarbakır gave the order for her release, citing the lack of adequate evidence against Güven who was facing terror-related charges. Güven was accused of terror activities following her statements and social media posts on Turkish military action against the People’s Protection Units (YPG) in the Afrin region of northwestern Syria. She was arrested on Jan. 22 as part of a probe launched by the Diyarbakır Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office.
The prosecutor, who demanded more than 31 years in imprisonment for Güven after accusing her of “establishing and managing an armed terrorist organization” as well as “disseminating the propaganda of terrorists,” objected the ruling at a higher court, the 10th High Criminal Court in Diyarbakır.
The court accepted the objection and ordered the arrest of Güven, who was elected as HDP deputy for the southeastern province of Hakkari in the June 24 parliamentary elections.
A number of HDP officials are currently imprisoned. One of them is the party’s former co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş, who ran as the party’s presidential candidate in the June 24 election. Demirtaş received 8,4 percent of the vote in the election, which took place under an ongoing state of emergency.
Meanwhile, the HDP made it above the much-criticized 10 percent threshold a party needs to surpass in order to secure seats in parliament. The HDP won 11,7 percent of the vote in the parliamentary race on June 24 and secured 67 seats in the 600-seat parliament.
