Political prisoner Mehmet Emin Özkan is not released from prison despite his poor health. The 83-year-old has been innocently imprisoned in Turkey for 25 years. In recent weeks, he has been taken from the D-type prison in Amed (tr. Diyarbakir) to the hospital several times due to acute health problems and has been handcuffed to bed there. All requests for his release from prison have been rejected.

Now his son Ahmet Özkan, who is also imprisoned, has been transferred from another correctional facility in Amed to D-Type Prison to care for his father. As he told relatives by telephone, Mehmet Emin Özkan was taken to the hospital yesterday and today for an assessment of his health - with his hands tied in a wheelchair.

Özkan has been in prison since 1996 and is included in the list of "seriously ill prisoners" by the Human Rights Association (IHD). He suffers from various illnesses, including dementia, and has so far survived six heart attacks. Convicted as an alleged PKK member, he was sentenced to an aggravated life sentence for the murder of Turkish Brigadier General Bahtiyar Aydın. The charges against him were based largely on the testimony of a key witness. It later came out that Aydın had been shot by his own men.