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| - The long detention of Kurdish politician Selahattin Demirtas is a violation of his rights, a top Turkish court ruled in a decision published on Friday. Demirtas, a former presidential candidate and persistent thorn in the side of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been in jail since November 2016. And he risks up to 142 years in prison if convicted of links to Kurdish militants in the main trial still running against him. But the Constitutional Court said Demirtas' right to freedom and safety was violated, in a ruling published in the Official Gazette. It also ordered compensation of 50,000 Turkish lira ($7,300) to be paid. While his lawyers demanded his immediate release, it was not clear if he will be freed. The European Court of Human Rights in November 2018 urged his release, but a Turkish court kept him inside later that year. Then a court in September 2019 ruled Demirtas should be released but he was not because of a 2018 conviction to over four years in jail for "terrorist propaganda". "This (new) ruling affects the second order of arrest given on September 20, 2019, which is still in force today," his lawyer Mahsuni Karaman tweeted. Karaman added that the Constitutional Court's decision means the detention between November 2016 and September 2019 was "not reasonable". Demirtas, 47, is the former leader of the pro-Kurdish leftist Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) and was among several party officials detained after the 2016 failed coup. His co-leader, Figen Yuksekdag, was also among those taken into custody. Erdogan's critics say the crackdown after the 2016 attempted overthrow was used as a pretext to remove political opponents and civil society activists. The Turkish government says the HDP is a political front for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which denies it. The PKK, which has waged an insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984, is blacklisted as a terror group by Ankara and its Western allies. raz/fo/bp
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