MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Some 70 Kurds has staged a spontaneous demonstration in the western German city of Essen against Turkey's continued detention of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan, local police said Friday.
"The demonstration was peaceful and trouble-free," police spokesman Marco Ueberbach was quoted as saying by the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (WAZ).
Ocalan, one of the founding members of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), was arrested in 1999 by the Turkish National Intelligence Agency (MIT) with the support of the CIA in Nairobi and taken to Turkey, where he was sentenced to death for the creation of a militant group, which was later commuted to a life sentence following pressure from the international community.
The Kurds, Turkey's largest ethnic minority, are striving to create their own independent state. The PKK, which has been trying to promote the self-determination for the Kurdish community, is considered to be a terrorist organization in Turkey.
