The Kurdish politician and activist Sevil Rojbin Çetin has been sentenced to ten years in prison for membership of the PKK. When she was arrested, the Kurdish woman was severely tortured.

Sevil Rojbin Çetin has been sentenced to ten years in prison. The Kurdish politician and activist was accused of membership in the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) before the 2nd Court in Van and took part in Friday's trial via a video link from the women's prison in Diyarbakir. Before the verdict was announced, she again denied the allegations. In her defense, Çetin said she saw the trial as part of the Turkish state's campaign of political annihilation against Kurdish local politics and the women's liberation movement. The prosecution was essentially based on the testimony of anonymous witnesses.

Sevil Rojbin Çetin is an activist of the Kurdish women's movement TJA (Tevgera Jinên Azad) and was also a member of the local political committee of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). In June 2020, she was attacked in her apartment in Amed by masked special forces from the Turkish police. Before Çetin was arrested, she suffered torture for around three and a half hours, in which eleven officers are said to have been involved. They first set two dogs against Çetin. She suffered severe bite wounds on her legs. She was then pinned to the ground and beaten and kicked by police officers who held a gun to her head. At the end of the torture, Çetin was stripped half-naked and photographed. The Kurdish woman, who was suffering from cervical cancer, had to spend almost two weeks in police custody before a court ordered custody. She is currently being held in Diyarbakır Women's Prison.

Çetin is not in prison for the first time. In March 2014, she was elected district mayor of Êrdmed (Edremit) in the province of Van in the municipal elections. Just two and a half years later, she was removed from office and imprisoned along with about a hundred other mayors. At that time, Çetin stayed behind bars for around fourteen months, accused in the context of the resistance for the self-government in North Kurdistan. In 2019, she was imprisoned again, this time for activities for the Movement of Democratic Free Women (DÖKH). The trial initiated by the public prosecutor in Mardin was linked to the trial in Van.