ANKARA (AFP) – Philanthropist and campaigner Osman Kavala has been sentenced to life in prison by a Turkish court, over claims he helped conspire to overthrow the government.
Kavala, who has spent more than four years in jail without a conviction, was given the verdict at Istanbul’s 13th Heavy Penal Court on Monday. He was convicted alongside a number of activists involved in the 2013 Gezi Park protests, but they received shorter 18-year sentences.
According to AFP, the panel of three judges ruled there was not enough evidence to convict the 64-year-old on a separate espionage charge.
The businessman, a founder of a number of organizations advocating inter-communal dialogue and democratic reforms in Turkey, was detained over allegations of involvement in the Gezi Park protests and the 2016 coup attempt.
In 2019, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Kavala’s detention was political and called for his immediate release, a request which has been repeated numerous times but has so far been ignored by Turkey.
Milena Buyum, a senior campaigner with Amnesty International, said that the verdict and charges had been “politically motivated.”
“The files are absent of any evidence at all that could justify an aggravated life sentence,” she said, referring to the sentence, which prohibits any chance of release short of a presidential pardon or the sentence being overturned.
She said the trial had been a “relentless travesty of justice and with this outcome, it has reached really epic proportions”.
“The verdict makes a mockery of the judicial process,” she said.
The verdict was greeted with outrage from rights groups on social media.
Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director at the human rights organization Dawn, described the verdict as “devastating”.
Supporters of Kavala and the Gezi Park protesters chanted “Everything is Taksim, everything is resistance”, following the verdict inside the courtroom, referring to Taksim Square in Istanbul which became a central gathering point for the 2013 protests.