On Thursday 12 October, following an urgent debate requested by all the political groups represented in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the Assembly adopted a resolution calling very firmly on Turkey to comply with the “clear judgment” handed down in 2019 by the European Court of Human Rights and to immediately release human rights defender Osman Kavala.
The non-execution of this first decision was confirmed by a second judgment of the Court, delivered in July 2022 as part of an exceptional “infringement proceeding” launched by the Committee of Ministers, but this did not prevent the Turkish Court of Cassation from confirming in September the sentence of aggravated life imprisonment handed down in 2019.
For both the Court and the Assembly, this sentence is not based on any evidence and has the “ulterior purpose” of reducing him to silence.
He is therefore a “political prisoner”, note the parliamentarians, who, in their resolution, believe that the time has come to initiate the “complementary joint procedure” defined by the Secretary General, the Committee of Ministers and the Assembly in 2020 to set out the stages of possible sanctions against a Member State that has failed to meet its obligations to the founding values of the Council of Europe.
The Assembly also recalls “its ability to challenge the credentials of the Turkish delegation” at the plenary session in January 2024.
If Turkey persists in not releasing Osman Kavala, the Assembly adds, other Council of Europe member states should apply the “Magnitsky legislation” or other legal instruments to impose targeted sanctions on Turkish officials, prosecutors and judges “responsible for the unlawful and arbitrary deprivation of liberty of Osman Kavala”.
Link to resolution: https://aeur.eu/f/91r (Original version in French by Véronique Leblanc)