At today's hearing in the Kobanê trial in Ankara, the arrest warrants of four defendants were lifted. The court ordered reporting requirements and a ban to leave the country against deposed mayor Ayhan Bilgen and former HDP executive committee members Berfin Özgü Köse, Can Memiş and Cihan Erdal. The trial will continue on Wednesday.

Accused in Ankara's so-called Kobanê trial are 108 political, civil society and Kurdish liberation movement figures accused of terror crimes and murder in dozens of cases related to protests during the ISIS attack on Kobanê in October 2014. For former HDP Co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş alone, the Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office is demanding up to 15,000 utopian years in prison. So far, 28 of the defendants have been imprisoned.

Today's court hearing in the Sincan prison complex was observed by HDP deputies and numerous other people. Sixty spectators were admitted to the courtroom, while the others had to move to another room. The trial began with objections from the lawyers against the actions of the judicial delegation. Attorney Cihan Aydin complained that the defense lawyers were constantly deprived of their right to speak. Subsequently, several defendants spoke in their defense.

Berfin Özgül Köse, who was a member of the HDP executive committee in 2014 and has been a political hostage in prison for eight and a half years, stated that she was not even present at the said executive committee meeting: "And at none of the meetings I have attended was violence called for nor was such a decision made."

Berfin Özgül Köse was the first of the four defendants to be released from Sincan Prison after the warrants were lifted and was received with great joy by HDP deputies Pero Dundar, Feleknas Uca, Ali Kenanoğlu, Kemal Pekgöz, Zeynel Özen, Nusrettin Maçın, Şevin Coşkun and lawyer Nuray Özdoğan.