Prosecutors seek life jail for football fans over protests
Turkish prosecutors are seeking life sentences for 35 fans of the Istanbul football team Besiktas for attempting to overthrow the Islamic-rooted government during mass protests last year, media said Monday.
Those accused, including Carsi leaders, attempted to topple the government by forming an "armed organisation" and provoking demonstrators, Milliyet newspaper reported, quoting from the indictment.
The prosecutors demanded so-called aggravated life sentences for all of them.
Some Carsi members had been detained during the protests, but were later released pending trial. No trial date has yet been set.
The indictment went on to say that Carsi members tried to create an image similar to the "Arab Spring" by providing the foreign media with images of clashes.
They also attempted to invade the prime minister's office in Besiktas as well as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's — former premier — house in the capital Ankara, it added.
Emma Sinclair-Webb, Turkey researcher at Human Rights Watch, denounced on Twitter "the ludicrous effort to put football fans on trial for a coup attempt during Gezi protests".
The oldest football club in Turkey, founded in 1903, Besiktas has one of its most revered firms of radical supporters. The hard-left Carsi is marked out by the circular anarchist symbol on their T-shirts.
The protests left at least eight people dead and some 8,000 injured after a brutal police crackdown.
Several trials related to the protests are already taking place across the country.
More than two dozen alleged leaders of Taksim Solidarity — the main activist group behind the protests — went on trial in June, also facing lengthy prison terms for their part in leading the protests.
dg/tw/afp