Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan’s brother Mehmet Öcalan and tutelar Mazlum Dinc appealed through their lawyers to the Bursa Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office to visit Imrali on Friday.

 

Hamili Yildirim’s brother Polat Yildirim, Ömer Hayri Konar’s brother Emin Konar and Veysi Aktaş’s sister Melihe Çetin and her daughter Eylem Çetin issued a similar appeal to visit the island prison.

 

All the appeals were rejected by the prosecutor’s office citing the “Restrictions against convicts” clause in the “Execution of Sentences and Security Measures Act No.5275”.

 

Ömer Hayri Konar and Veysi Aktaş have been on Imrali as the “secretariat” since 15 March 2015, while Hamili Yıldırım was transferred to the island jail four months later. Since then, the fellow prisoners of the Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan were granted a visit by their families only once. After years of contact ban, the families of Imrali prisoners were first allowed to meet their relatives on 5 June. Breaking isolation conditions on Imrali was the result of months of hunger strikes involving thousands of activists.