Two students Ferhat Tüzer and Berna Yýlmaz were acquitted at their fourth hearing on Thursday after spending 17 months in prison. The 22-year-old students were arrested after they opened a banner reading "We want free education and we will get it" during a speech of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoðan at the Roma meeting in Istanbul on 14 March 2010.

The court board of the Istanbul 10th High Criminal Court chaired by Judge Aytekin Özcanlý decided unanimously for the acquittal of both students and thus followed the correspondent request of Prosecutor Kasým Ýlimlioðlu.

Tüzer and Yýlmaz were facing imprisonment of up to 15 years each under allegations of "membership of the DHKP/C terror organization" (Party and Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of the Turkish People) and "making propaganda for a terrorist organization".

Ferhat Tüzer was a sophomore student at the Thrace University Mechanical Department, and Berna Yýlmaz a fourth-year student at the Ankara University Faculty of Languages, History and Geography. Both students were expelled from university during their lengthy detention period.

Both students were taken into police custody right from the meeting in March 2010 where they had put up their banner. Their homes were searched by the police thereupon. Legal magazines, press releases and notebooks were seized and included into the case file as evidence.