On May 17, another hearing was held within the context of the lawsuits against the communists, who were arrested on September 10, 2006 as a result of a big operation against our party MLCP.{divide}
During the hearing, there were some occasions where the tensions increased, that the judges interrupted the communist prisoner Arif Celebi while he was reading his defence speech, and then the same happened during the defence speech of Seyfi Polat. When all the prisoners began shouting slogans to protest the intervention of judges, the gendarmes attacked the prisoners.
The prisoners spoke about the International Weeks Against Forced Disappearance from 17 to 31 May.
As always, revolutionaries, communists and democrats were in front of the court with banners to protest the trials and to increase solidarity with prisoners.
The court decided to set four prisoners free: Ibrahim Cicek (the chief editor of the newspaper Atilim and ESP candidate for the general elections on July 12 of this year), Ali Hidir Polat, Ziya Ulusoy and Uğur Kayaci.
8 out of 24 prisoners arrested in 2006 had already been set free with the decisions of the previous hearings. So now 12 out of 24 who are tried in the same process are still kept in prison.