Kurds clash with police on anniversary of rebel leader's capture
ROUGH CUT (NO REPORTER NARRATION)
Kurds clashed with police in the southeastern Turkish province of Cizre on Saturday (February 15) during protests to mark the anniversary of the capture of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Protesters threw petrol bombs and stones at riot police who responded with water cannons and tear gas to disperse the crowd.
Ocalan, who founded the armed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in 1978, was apprehended on February 15, 1999, while fleeing the Greek Embassy in Nairobi after a year-long international manhunt that took him from Syria to Russia, Italy, Greece and Kenya. He was sentenced to death later that year for treason, but his sentence was commuted to life in prison in 2002.
The PKK launched a separatist campaign against the Turkish state in 1984 in which 40,000 people, mostly Kurds, have died. The U.S. and European Union brands the PKK as a terrorist group. Ocalan is serving a life sentence in solitary confinement in an island jail off Ist
Kurds clashed with police in the southeastern Turkish province of Cizre on Saturday (February 15) during protests to mark the anniversary of the capture of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Protesters threw petrol bombs and stones at riot police who responded with water cannons and tear gas to disperse the crowd.
Ocalan, who founded the armed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in 1978, was apprehended on February 15, 1999, while fleeing the Greek Embassy in Nairobi after a year-long international manhunt that took him from Syria to Russia, Italy, Greece and Kenya. He was sentenced to death later that year for treason, but his sentence was commuted to life in prison in 2002.
The PKK launched a separatist campaign against the Turkish state in 1984 in which 40,000 people, mostly Kurds, have died. The U.S. and European Union brands the PKK as a terrorist group. Ocalan is serving a life sentence in solitary confinement in an island jail off Ist