Turkey's former prime minister Necmettin Erbakan has applied to the European Court of Human Rights for the suspension of a one-year jail sentence handed down against him earlier this month, one of his aides said Tuesday.
Erbakan's French lawyer has filed an application with the Strasbourg-based court to put on hold the execution of the sentence until a last recourse through the country's judiciary process is exhausted, former justice minister Sevket Kazan told Anatolia news agency.
The appeals court on July 5th upheld a sentence handed down in March for inciting racial and religious hatred in pro-Islamic and pro-Kurdish remarks in a 1994 election campaign.
Under the penal code, Erbakan, who was Turkey's first Islamist prime minister and who resigned in 1997 after a year in office following a military-led anti-Islamist campaign, would serve some five months in jail but be barred from politics for life.
Erbakan, 74, can now ask Turkey's chief prosecutor to review the sentence, a procedure, which rarely bears fruit. He must file his request before August 5th.
Erbakan would file a second application with the European Court of Human Rights against the sentence itself if the prosecutor's revision fails to produce results, Kazan said.
The constitutional court had already slapped a five-year political ban on Erbakan and several other party leaders in 1998 when his Welfare Party was banned for anti-secular activities - ANKARA (AFP)
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