I. INTRODUCTION
1. From the very outset, İmralı Island Prison was built as a prison with one single cell for one single prisoner based on the idea of isolation within isolation. Until November 2009, our client
Mr #Abdullah Öcalan# was the only prisoner in the prison. In 2009, after the building was renovated and additional cells were added, other prisoners were transferred to the prison. Here, they were subjected to practices far more severe than what they had faced in the prisons where they came from, that is, they were subjected to the “İmralı Isolation System”, designed and implemented specifically for Mr Öcalan. After November 2009, the only thing that changed was that the regime of isolation against one person now turned into a form of group isolation. After six years in İmralı,these prisoners were transferred to other prisons. Our clients Mr Hamili Yıldırım, Mr Ömer Hayri Konar, Mr Veysi Aktaş, Mr Nasrullah Kuran and Mr Çetin Arkaş, who replaced the other prisoners on 16-17 March 2015, started to be subjected to the same practice of absolute isolation and incommunicado detention specific to Mr Öcalan from 5 April 2015. They have not been heard from for about three years.
II. INCOMMUNICADO DETENTION: NOT A SINGLE SIGN OF LIFE
2. Mr Abdullah Öcalan has been held in a solitary cell in the island prison of İmralı since 15 February 1999. For the first ten years he was the only prisoner in the single-cell island prison.
Although six prisoners were brought in on 17 November 2009, he continued to be held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day on weekdays and 24 hours on weekends. During the first twelve years, his right to see a lawyer was illegally limited to one hour one day a week, but the authorities constantly alleged pretexts such as “adverse weather conditions” or “technical failure of the coastal vessel” to prevent him from exercising even this limited right. Since 27 July 2011 until today, he has only been able to meet with his lawyers on five occasions, and all these meetings took place between May and August 2019. The last of these five meetings was on 7 August 2019...[1]
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