Kurdish politician, lawyer and writer Mahmut Alinak was arrested on 17 February in Kars province on suspicion of “membership to a terrorist organisation”.The Kurdish politician is accused of “disrupting the unity of the state” and “undermining the independence of the state” and faces life sentence.

Alınak was released from prison to house arrest following the first hearing held at the 2nd Heavy Penal Court of Kars on Wednesday.

The prosecutor at the 2nd Heavy Penal Court of Kars has filed an appeal against the decision of the court and requested Alınak’s re-arrest on Thursday. The prosecutor justified the request with “the seriousness of the charges that constitute an absolute ground for imprisonment".

The 68-year-old politician is accused of separatism. If convicted, he is threatened with a life sentence. The 300-page indictment consists largely of quotes from public statements, telephone conversations and Alınak's books. His demand that Kurdish be recognized as equivalent to other languages, as well as the donation of the proceeds from his book "Mehmet Tunç and Bêkes" to the family of Mehmet Tunç, chairman of the local People's Council, who died in one of the death basements in Cizre in 2016, is interpreted by the public prosecutor's office as an attempted "destruction of the unity and integrity of the state".

Who is Mahmut Alınak?

Mahmut Alınak was born in 1952 in Digor in the province of Kars. He studied law in Ankara and became a lawyer. In 1987 he entered the Turkish parliament for the first time as a member of the SHP. In 1994, after the lifting of parliamentary immunity, he was arrested together with Orhan Doğan, Hatip Dicle, Ahmet Türk, Sırrı Sakık and Leyla Zana. In prison he wrote his first two books.

Alınak was imprisoned several times. In 2011, he was arrested during the KCK operations and spent seven months in prison. In 2014 he spent another three months in prison.