CoE Committee of Ministers call for Demirtas's immediate release

The Council of Europe (CoE) Committee of Ministers (CoM) urged the Turkish Constitutional Court to deliver its decision without further delay in the case of Selahattin Demirtas, the imprisoned former co chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), who is held in custody despite a European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decision that orders his immediate release.

After its recent meetings that ended on Thursday, the Committee of Ministers noted that ECHR had concluded that Demirtas "was detained in the absence of evidence to support a reasonable suspicion he had committed an offense," and that his detention "pursued the ulterior purpose of stifling pluralism and limiting freedom of political debate."

CoM called upon the Turkish authorities "to ensure that the Constitutional Court makes its determination concerning Demirtas’s ongoing detention in the shortest possible time frame and with full regard to the ECHR's findings in the case, and to assure his immediate release."

Demirtas has been incarcerated in Turkey's Edirne prison over "terror" allegations since November 2016. ECHR issued its decision and ordered his release on 22 December 2020.