Courts have gone into a dispute over the cases against HDP Co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş, who was detained in Amed with the AKP coup and later arrested on November 3, 2016, and the main casefile has been left out in the open.

When the Ankara High Criminal Court No.2 refused the demand to combine Demirtaş’s case with the case of Yasin Börü and 3 others who were killed during the October 6-8 incidents, the Ankara High Criminal Court No.19 decided to combine the cases ex officio. The dispute between the two courts was taken to the Ankara Regional Court of Justice.

The Chairperson of the Ankara High Criminal Court No.2 stated that there is no possibility of Demirtaş being responsible for the incidents in question.

Demirtaş’s lawyer Mahsuni Karaman said: “Nobody wants to put Demirtaş on trial, because the responsibility is very high. We believe that the courts don’t want to take on these cases because the accusations and allegations in them are far fetched.”

Karaman also stated that Demirtaş won’t be attending the coming hearings via the video conferencing system SEGBİS and that he wants to attend the courts in the cities the hearings are held in. Karaman added: “He himself has declared that if the imposition to take him to hearings in handcuffs continues, he won’t be attending the hearings at al.”

HDP Co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş is on trial for a total of 21 cases in 11 cities throughout Turkey, other than the case he is arrested for.