16 Nov 2000
Agence France-Presse

ANKARA, Nov 16 (AFP) - A group of Belgian jurists have questioned Kurdish rebel leader
Abdullah Ocalan in his Turkish prison cell as part of an investigation into money-laundering
in Belgium, the Turkish justice ministry said Thursday.
 
 "An eight-member delegation, headed by Belgian judge Jeroen Burm, visited convict
Abdullah Ocalan Tuesday" on the prison island of Imrali in northwestern Turkey, the
ministry said in a statement.
 
It added that the visit was allowed after a Belgian court demanded that Kurdistan Workers'
Party (PKK) leader Ocalan testify as a witness in an investigation against the ROJ
broadcasting company.
 
The company was running the Brussels-based Kurdish channel MED-TV, which had its
British licence revoked in April last year for provoking violence in broadcasts after Turkey
captured Ocalan in Kenya in an undercover operation in February 1999.
 
 The investigation against ROJ, called "Operation Sputnik", was launched after Belgian
authorities found "significant proof" that it was involved in money-laundering, the statement
said.
 
One of Ocalan's lawyers, Dogan Erbas, said the PKK leader was interviewed as a "person
who may help in the probe" and not a witness.
 
"Ocalan downplayed the importance of the issue and declined to give details," Erbas told
AFP of the meeting with the Belgian delegation.
 
Tuesday's visit was the second one by people other than Ocalan's lawyers and relatives
allowed to see the rebel leader since he was put under solitary confinement on Imrali.
 
The first visit was by members of the Council of Europe's committee for the prevention of
torture in March 1999 -- only two weeks after Ocalan's capture -- to supervise the conditions
of his detention.
 
"The Belgians appear to have done a great job because the procedures to get permission to
visit Ocalan are really very hard," Erbas said.
 
In June, Ocalan was sentenced to death for treason and separatism as the leader of the PKK,
which took up arms against Turkey in 1984 for Kurdish self-rule in southeastern Turkey.
 
Ankara has suspended the sentence to grant the European Court of Human Rights time to
hear Ocalan's complaints against Turkey.
 
The Strasbourg-based court is set to review the receivability of Ocalan's case on November
21.
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The Kurdistan Observer
www.kurdistanobserver.com

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