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The European Union condemned Wednesday the conviction of human rights award winner Leyla Zana in a retrial in Turkey, warning it could jeopardise the country's EU entry bid.
The European Commission, the EU's executive arm which plays a key role in recommending whether Ankara should get the EU green light, said it cast a "negative shadow" over Turkey's reform efforts.
"The commission strongly deplores today's verdict," said EU enlargement commissioner Guenter Verheugen, after Zana and three other former Kurdish lawmakers were sentenced to 15 years in jail for membership of an armed rebel group, confirming a 1994 sentence.
The verdict "gives rise to serious concern in the light of the (EU's) political criteria and casts a negative shadow on the implementation of political reforms in Turkey," he added in a statement.
The commission is due to publish a report on Turkey later this year which will serve as the basis for a decision by EU leaders in December on whether to start formal EU entry negotiations with Ankara.
A spokesman for Verheugen declined to say how seriously the Zana verdict could affect Brussels' opinion of Turkey.
"I cannot speculate on the final assessment but this is an element that will be taken into account among all the others when we make our assessment in October," said the spokesman, Jean-Christophe Filori.
The Ankara state security court confirmed convictions against Zana, winner of the European Parliament's 1995 Sakharov prize, along with co-defendants Hatip Dicle, Orhan Dogan and Selim Sadak.
Wednesday's verdict came against a 2001 ruling by the European Court of Human Rights which had found the original trial of the four activist unfair and ordered that they be tried again.
Their lawyer, Yusuf Alatas, denounced the Ankara trial as unfair, and announced that they would again appeal before the European Court of Human Rights if need be.
Under Turkish law, the four former lawmakers, who have already been in jail for a decade, will be up for release in 2005.
The Brussels spokesman repeatedly declined to be drawn on the potential full impact of the verdict.
But he noted that such state security courts were due to be abolished in Turkey as part of a raft of EU-oriented reforms.

Copyright Agence France-Presse, 2004

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