A man who fled to Sweden in 2015 has been sentenced to almost seven years in prison in Turkey for belonging to the Kurdish organization PKK.
19:05•Updated 19:06
Turkey has captured today a Kurdish man deported by Sweden, who is now locked up in a prison in Istanbul.
This was reported on Saturday by someone close to the Turkish administration Demirören news office (you will switch to another service) (DHA).
The deportation was confirmed by the Swedish Minister of Immigration Maria Malmer Stenergard says that the deportation was an official decision and had nothing to do with the Swedish government.
– It is a deportation case where the person’s asylum application was rejected, Stenergard told SVT.
– The government has no role in processing asylum applications, he emphasized.
Turkey’s state news agency Anadolu also reported earlier that Sweden deported the man to Turkey on Friday.
A man who fled to Sweden in 2015 has been sentenced to almost seven years in prison in Turkey for belonging to the Kurdish organization PKK. In addition to Turkey, the PKK is listed as a terrorist organization in the European Union and the United States.
NATO country Turkey has demanded that Finland and Sweden hand over persons they consider terrorists to Turkey, so that it would accept the countries’ NATO membership. However, the deported man was not on the list published in the Turkish media of persons that Turkey has requested to be extradited from Sweden and Finland.
Man’s lawyer: The case is political
According to SVT, the man lived in western Sweden and worked in the restaurant industry. According to Turkey, the deportee was a member of the PKK and participated in the activities of the armed organization in southeastern Turkey.
The Kurdish man himself has denied being a member of the PKK and only said that he participated in Kurdish demonstrations in Sweden.
– I told (Swedish authorities) that I had been in the country for six years, and asked what crime I had committed. They referred to my trial in Turkey and the two pro-democracy demonstrations in Sweden that I had participated in. In Turkey, the easiest thing is to blame terrorism, the man told the independent Turkish To the Duvar news site (you will switch to another service) on Thursday after he was apprehended in Sweden.
According to Duvar, the man was a bus driver in his hometown who actively supported the local branch of Turkey’s largest pro-Kurdish party HDP.
According to DHA, the man was taken from the Istanbul airport directly to the police station and for a medical examination. From there, he was brought to trial at the Gaziosmanpasa Courthouse in Istanbul, where it was decided to imprison him. Finally, the man was transferred to Metris prison in Istanbul today.