Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has granted a pardon to Turkey's Hezbollah's "military wing leader" who buried three people in his basement after brutally torturing them in Ankara.
A presidential pardon has been published in the Official Gazette, in line with which the sentences of Mehmet Emin Alpsoy, who was sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment as part of the Hezbollah Trial in Turkey, and former Lieutenant General Çetin Saner, who was sentenced to life imprisonment as part of the February 28 Trial, were revoked due to their "old age".
In the 1990s, the radical Islamist Turkish Hezbollah, which is controlled by the state, was particularly active as a death squad in the Kurdish region and was responsible for countless murdered and "disappeared" people.
Erdogan's pardon came on the eve of the May 14 elections. The pro-Hezbollah Hüdapar (Free Cause Party) is in Erdogan's electoral alliance.
Mehmet Emin Alpsoy brutally murdered 3 people in Ankara and buried them in the basement of his flat. He was then sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment as the "military wing leader" of Hezbollah.
The presidential pardon also revoked the sentences of Nihat İlliman, imprisoned for deliberate killing, and Sedat Çelik, imprisoned for drug dealing, on the grounds of "disability".
According to the data by the Human Rights Association (IHD), there are at least 1517 sick prisoners, 651 of whom are seriously ill. The government does not respond to repeated calls for the release of political prisoners. Numerous prisoners remain behind bars for arbitrary reasons even though they have served their jail time.
