Husband of Leyla Zana allowed to walk free

Istanbul (AP) Turkish authorities yesterday released the husband of Kurdish activist Leyla Zana, and a court dropped past charges against him to comply with recent legal reforms aimed at strengthening Turkey's European Union membership bid, the Anatolia news agency said.

Mehdi Zana, a former mayor of Diyarbakir in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast and husband of well-known activist Leyla Zana, was detained by police as he arrived in the country Friday. It was the first time he entered Turkey since leaving a decade ago after serving a total of 16 years in prison on charges of advocating Kurdish separatism.

Freedom of speech

The court yesterday freed Zana, who had been a political refugee in Sweden, ruling that separate charges against him and arrest warrants issued for him in 1996 and 1997 were no longer valid under legal reforms improving freedom of speech."From now on we're free," the agency quoted him as saying after his release.

Zana, 64, was returning home with his wife from Belgium, where she made an acceptance speech for a prestigious human rights award presented by the European Parliament.

Leyla Zana, a former lawmaker, was awarded the European Parliament's Sakharov Prize in 1995 for her peaceful work to advance human rights for the Kurdish minority in Turkey. She had been sentenced a year earlier to 15 years in prison for alleged connections to Kurdish rebels.

Her husband accepted the award on her behalf in 1995 when Zana was in prison. She was released last June a move many saw as tied to Turkey's bid to join the EU.

Kurds make up about 20 per cent of Turkey's 68 million people. Kurdish rebels fought a 15-year war for autonomy in the country's predominantly Kurdish southeast before declaring a cease-fire in 1999.