On 30 December 2003, journalist Sabri Ejder Ozic was sentenced in Adana to one year's imprisonment for 'insulting and mocking parliament'.

The sentence was based on the journalist's comments during a radio programme that, were Turkish parliament to allow Turkish land to be used by US Coalition troops in the war in Iraq, it would implicate the Turkish parliament in that 'illegitimate war'. "If permission to send troops for terrorist acts is approved by parliament then this parliament would also be terrorist," he stated on 24 February 2003.

The journalist, an activist in the pro-Kurdish Ozgur Toplum party and former station director of Radio Dunya, was sentenced with 'insulting and mocking parliament' under Article 159 of the Turkish Criminal Code. The offence carries a minimum penalty of six months' imprisonment.

KHRP is concerned that pro-Kurdish journalists, authors and publishers are continuing to be prosecuted in Turkey, in spite of the abolition of several notorious laws contained in the 2002 and 2003 'Harmonisation Packages'.

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