Pro-Kurdish party legislator released from prison in Turkey

ANKARA, Turkey – Turkey’s state-run news agency says a prominent former pro-Kurdish party legislator and film-maker has been freed from prison after the country’s top court ruled that his right to freedom of expression has been violated.

Anadolu Agency says Sirri Sureyya Onder, a former deputy of the People’s Democratic Party, or HDP, was released from a high security prison in northwest Turkey on Friday.

Onder was convicted of the charge of “spreading terrorist propaganda” and sentenced to more than three years in prison. He had been jailed since December 2018.

Accused of supporting outlawed Kurdish rebels, he was convicted along with HDP’s former leader Selahattin Demirtas for speeches they delivered in 2013, during festivities marking a Kurdish spring festival.

Demirtas remains jailed along with several other HDP legislators.