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16 Iyar 5765 - May 25, 2005 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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NEWS
Europe Once Again Displays Understanding for Terror

By Arnon Yaffeh, Paris

The European Court for Human Rights is forcing Turkey to retry Abdullah Occalan, the head of Kurdish terror organization PKK allegedly responsible for the murder of thousands. Occalan is thought of in Turkey like Bin Laden is thought of in the West—a terrorist who engineered bloody terrorist activities from bases in Syria. A Turkish court sentenced him to death but mitigated the sentence to life imprisonment when the Europeans came to his defense. According to Turkish sources his organization waged a terrorist war in which 37,000 people were killed.

"The ruling of the European Court in Strasbourg should serve as another warning against vesting authority in international courts like the Hague," writes the Wall Street Journal, saying such that courts misuse their authority to issue political rulings. The Europeans stirred sympathy for Occalan and his treacherous organization. Greece, Belgium and France supported Kurdish terrorism. In France the wife of former president Francois Mitterrand supported Kurdish terrorism.

In 1988 Turkey threatened to start a war with Syria if it refused to extradite Occalan and expel PKK members from their bases in Syria and the Lebanon Valley. Massing heavy forces on the Syrian border convinced Assad to deport Occalan, who was discovered in Italy and smuggled out to Kenya by Italian intelligence services. The Turks captured him in the Greek embassy in Nairobi and brought him to trial. European governments warned Turkey not to harm him and pleaded for his life until the Turks were compelled to commute his sentence to life in prison to avoid retribution by the Europeans.

The European Court rejected the trial the Turks held, arguing the sentence was predetermined. Turkish authorities broadcast the trial from the remote island where it was held. International jurist David Rivkin said the European Court is defending terrorists in a political trial rife with superciliousness and hypocrisy.

 

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