Kurdish People's Leader Abdullah Öcalan has been held in a solitary cell in İmralı Prison since 15 February 1999.

Öcalan has met with his family members five times since 2014. The last face-to-face meeting was with his brother in March 2020. A phone call was allowed on 25 March 2021 and that was the last date that anyone had contact with him. On the other hand, his right to see his lawyers was limited to one hour a week for the first 12 years.  However, he was constantly prevented from exercising this right. He met with his lawyers only five times between 2011 and 2019. Since 2019, his lawyers have never been able to visit him. Numerous visitation applications were rejected or left unanswered.

Activist and lawyer Paula Martin Ponz spoke to ANF about the isolation imposed on Kurdish People's Leader Abdullah Öcalan, the Turkish isolation policy and practice in international law and the dangers of this isolation.

It has been 32 months now that there has been no meeting with the leader of the Kurdish people, Abdullah Öcalan, and not any news or message has been received from him. How can the isolation policy and practice against Abdullah Öcalan be interpreted in terms of fundamental human rights law?

Isolation, as a repressive tool used by governments to punish inmates, is considered torture by itself. It's true that to date, there are no pronouncements in absolute terms on the limits beyond which solitary confinement should be considered degrading treatment. 'The assessment of this minimum is essentially relative; it depends on all the facts of the case, especially the duration of the treatment and its physical and mental effects, as well as, sometimes, the sex, age and state of health of the victim (Kudla v. Poland; Gelfmann v. France; Renolde v. France)'

But it is not less true that the European Court of Human Rights has already had occasion to rule on a number of occasions on situations of violations of rights in prison, and on the possible violation of Article 3 ECHR (prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment and punishment) arising from the conditions of imprisonment. However, it is possible to affirm that today there is already sufficient jurisprudential background to be able to affirm that many of the situations that occur in solitary confinement in state prisons fall into the category defined as degrading treatment by the Strasbourg Court, to the point of being able to question the very regime of compliance in first degree on the basis of such criteria.

Thus, since the ECtHR's statement regarding 'the right of every prisoner to conditions of detention compatible with human dignity, to ensure that the modalities of application of the measures adopted do not subject the person to distress or an ordeal of such intensity as to exceed the unavoidable level of suffering inherent in confinement (para. 109)', 'in view of the potentially highly harmful effects of solitary confinement, the principle of proportionality requires that it be used as a disciplinary measure only in exceptional cases, as a last resort and for the shortest possible time (para. 111)' (ECHR Ketreb v. France).

Everything we have gathered leads us to conclude that solitary confinement is a form of torture. It is undeniable that the system has serious shortcomings that unacceptably aggravate the situation for inmates: medical neglect, lack of reintegration programs and contact with the outside world, poor sanitary conditions, lack of adequate control mechanisms, etc.

But even if all these shortcomings were corrected, sending a person to perpetual solitary confinement would still mean causing suffering in retaliation for past behavior, and not a rehabilitation or re-socialization program for a person who has committed a crime. The terrible consequences on mental health (often irreversible) are undeniable. To make a short list of said consequences, we can point out:

That the psychological consequences of said symptoms have been verified can manifest themselves gradually up to acute or chronic. The known categories are as follows: anguish, depression: from low mood to clinical depression, anger (from anger to deep rage, hostility, inability to restrain impulses, physical and verbal violence against oneself, others or objects, uncontained rage), cognitive problems: from lack of concentration to states of high confusion, perceptual distortions, paranoia and psychosis and finally and most terrible, self-mutilation and suicide.

The UN Committee Against Torture considers in its Report of 3/04/1996 that 'the conditions of compliance in 1st degree regime - cell hours, restrictions, exclusion from common activities, sensory deprivation... could be considered as prohibited treatment under article 16 of the Convention Against Torture (cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment)'.

If we gather all this together and think briefly about the situation to which the Kurdish political leader Abdullah Öcalan has been subjected during the last 24 years, we can not see his current situation as any other thing than a blatant and cruel obliteration of the most basic and simple human rights. Mr Öcalan has been held in a solitary cell in İmralı Prison since 15 February 1999.

Since 2014, he has only been allowed to meet his family 5 times. The last face-to-face meeting was with his brother in March 2020. A phone call was allowed on 25 March 2021 and that was the last date that anyone had contact with him. If we just have this resume in consideration, we can clearly see that the most basic human rights of Mr. Öcalan have been violated, but on top of that, we can not forget that every prohibition, limitation of movement, space, human contact... has an effect on the inmate and that all the effects that the measures taken against Mr. Öcalan have effects considered as cruel, inhuman and degrading.

And we can't forget that every degrading act against any prisoner is also a punishment against their family and supporters, and in the case of Mr. Öcalan, also a punishment against the kurdish population.

In addition, what are the dangers of this isolation in terms of access to the right to health/ right to see his lawyers/ right to a fair trial?

On one hand, his right to see his lawyers was limited to one hour a week for the first 12 years. However, he was constantly prevented from exercising this right. There is no way of preparing a fair defense if your right to see your legal team is restricted, but even more, we have to point out that between 2011 and 2019 he has met with his lawyers only five times and none since 2019. Numerous visitation applications were rejected or left unanswered.

So, this means that it is impossible to prepare not just the legal defense but to have an idea of the current situation of Mr. Öcalan in prison, neither to be able to make any claim against the prison or to let him know his situation or that of the rest of the persons in prison.

The right to have a lawyer when you are in prison, to have easy access to him and to the documents of his trial, to be able to have an exchange with the prison administration and to have a proper, fair and stable regime of visits should be acknowledged as a human right and it is totally needed to be able to built a fair defense and trial.