Delegates from PEN centers participated in Barcelona Forum 2004 signed petitions for freedom of expression and human rights in Iraq and Israel. The petition addressing US President Bush, US administrator in Iraq Bremer and Israel Prime minister Sharon.

ECHR said Turkey, by sentencing former DEP deputy Yurttas, had violated the principles of freedom of expression, and prolonged detention. ECHR said the sentence handed to him for charges of separatism was unnecessary in a democratic society.

Anchor Gundogdu of Adana local station Radyo Dunya was detained and will stand trial for quoting a statement from imprisoned Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan. She is charged with separatist broadcasts, and affiliation with illegal organization.

Human rights activists compiled a voluminous book out of regulations that limit the freedom of thought. The Initiative Against Crimes of Thought, who made the study said: There is much more to be done until we can say thought is no longer a crime!

Visitors of the prisoners at the Tekirdag F-type prison were beaten up by soldiers with nightsticks. The Human Rights Associations Istanbul branch is pursuing legal action against the incident.

ECHR judge Maruste, who spoke at the Human Rights General Assembly, said freedom of expression should be applied in its widest form to cases where the state authorities and government is being criticized.

DEHAP head Tuncer Bakirhan testified for saying goodbye and thank you in Kurdish after a speech at an election rally. It is not yet clear if he will stand trial.

523 people went missing in Turkey under detention. The Saturday Mothers, who had their weekly vigil in front of the Galatasaray High School for four years want to know what happened to the missing and demand that those responsible are tried.

Teacher Eriman of an elementary school was sent to a village school after he asked his students to learn a Kurdish poem for the reading day:I am just upset that I was assigned to another school before being able to give report cards to my students.

IHD Van Branchs head Lawyer Zeki Yuksel said there were a total of 35 rights violations in April, including those that appeared in the media. Yuksel also demanded that the Bostanici Paramilitary Police Station is moved out of the residential area.

4 police officers who beat up and detained two youths who were shouting, we want jobs, were released. Police officers supported their friends with applauses and prevented the reporters from taking photographs or filming the incident in the court.

The Governorship has demanded that the Human Rights Agenda Association is closed down. The associations head, lawyer Orhan K. Cengiz, wrote a letter to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and asked him to take action.

497 people have applied to the Izmir Bar Torture Prevention Group in the last 2 years saying they were tortured. According to a report, 67 of them were women, and 121 of them were under 18. 383 police are being charged with torture in 97 trials.

International PEN, alongside the International Publishers Association, is monitoring the trials against more than 40 such books and publications that have been brought to the courts during the past year.

Although Amnesty International believes that the former deputies Zana, Dicle, Dogan and Sadak should have been released unconditionally, the retrial offered the opportunity to end the injustice of their continued imprisonment.

A court convicted Zana and three former Kurdish deputies of having links to rebels in their retrial, ordering them to serve the remainder of their 15-year prison sentences.They have already served 10 years in prison, would be eligible for release in 2005.

EP ad hoc delegation chair Lagendijk: We are convinced that the State Security Court cannot guarantee the impartiality of the legal proceedings against Leyla Zana and her colleagues and therefore approve the Governments plan to abolish this body.

There was no presumption of innocence, the defense was not treated equally with the prosecution and the independence of the court is questionable at best, Besharaty-Movaed, legal advisor for the Centre for the independence of Judges and Lawyers said.

Its ironic that these events coincide with discussions that Turkish Penal Code is discriminative against women, especially with the use of such words as honor, public moral, the order of family and society, public decency...

IHD said the reports given by Forensic Medical Institution to Wernicke Korsakoff patients werent in line with ethics. It called on the Ministry and prosecutors to take action against the reports, which lead to the patients being arrested arrested.