The European Court of Human Rights ordered Turkey to immediately release philanthropist Osman Kavala, ruling his life sentence null and void.
STRASBOURG: Europe’s top rights court Tuesday ordered Turkey to “immediately” release civil society leader Osman Kavala, who has been behind bars for nearly a decade, ruling that his criminal conviction was “null and void”.
The Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) also ordered Turkey to pay more than 113,000 euros ($131,759) to the 68-year-old, who was sentenced to life for “attempting to overthrow the government” in 2022.
The court found Turkey violated the Parisian-born philanthropist’s freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, right to liberty and right to a fair trial, and was guilty of subjecting him to inhuman or degrading treatment.
“The measures taken against the applicant… had been predominantly motivated by an ulterior purpose, namely, to punish him for his role in the Gezi Park demonstrations (in 2013) and for expressing his opinions as a human rights defender, and to silence him,” the court said in its ruling.
Kavala, who has become a symbol of the crackdown on civil society in Turkey, was arrested in October 2017 on a string of accusations ranging from espionage and financing protests to involvement in a failed 2016 coup.
He was charged over a wave of 2013 anti-government protests that posed the first serious challenge to the increasingly dominant rule of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was prime minister at the time.
The European rights court ordered his release in 2019.
He was acquitted in 2020 but then immediately rearrested on new charges and sentenced to life two years later.
In 2023, the Council of Europe, Europe’s leading human rights organisation, awarded Kavala its top rights prize in a move seeking to highlight Turkey’s refusal to abide by ECHR rulings.
