Kurdish youth activists staged a civil disobedience action at the European Parliament EP Liaison Office in Marseille to denounce the isolation of Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan and demand his freedom.

Imprisoned for more than 24 years on the prison island of Imrali, the Kurdish people's leader, Abdullah Öcalan, has been held incommunicado for 33 months now, without any contact with the outside world. The complete lack of information regarding the situation of Öcalan and his three fellow prisoners – Hamili Yıldırım, Ömer Hayri Konar and Veysi Aktaş – raises growing concerns about their safety and health. Countless requests for visits filed for years by the lawyers and families of Imrali detainees have gone unanswered.

The activists entered the building with a banner in French which read “Stop European complicity, Freedom for Öcalan” and chanting the slogan “Liberté pour Öcalan”.

Demonstrators denounced the “complicity” of all institutions in Europe and the world in the unlawful treatment of Abdullah Öcalan and called for action to stop the torture system implemented against the Kurdish leader who is held in incommunicado detention.

Activists presented a dossier about the Imrali torture system to the EP officials and continued their action outside the building.

The Imralı F Type High Security Closed Prison, where Abdullah Öcalan has been held since February 1999,  has since been operated based on a special status and through special practices.

Under the so-called aggravated execution regime, Abdullah Öcalan and his fellow prisoners, Hamili Yildirim, Ömer Hayri Konar and Veysi Aktaş, have been held under conditions of extraordinary isolation for a long time, 24 years in terms of Öcalan and eight years each in terms of other inmates.

Despite all their attempts, lawyers from the Istanbul-based Asrin Law Office, which represents Abdullah Öcalan and his three fellow prisoners, have not been able to receive even a single sign of life from their clients since 25 March 2021. They could not obtain any information regarding their health status, their detention conditions, their legal situation in 2022. It has been 33 months that their clients have not been heard from in any way.