ISTANBUL: Turkiye has released a German national who was jailed in 2018 for alleged membership in an armed Kurdish group that Ankara considers a “terror” organization, a rights group representing him said Tuesday.
Patrick Kraicker “was released and is currently at a repatriation center in Ankara. He will return to Germany tomorrow,” Emine Ozhasar, a lawyer with the rights group, MLSA, told AFP.
Kraicker was arrested by Turkish police in March 2018 in the southeastern province of Sirnak and charged with trying to join the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in nearby war-torn Syria.
Aged 29, he was convicted of belonging to a terror group and jailed for six years and three months, his lawyer told AFP at the time.
Kraicker said he was hiking in the region at the time, and his supporters denied reports he once served in the German army.
His mother, Claudia Schmuck, said her son’s confession in police custody was obtained under pressure and without an interpreter.
Berlin indirectly confirmed his release in a statement that did not give his name, saying: “The person concerned is receiving consular assistance from our colleagues at the embassy in Ankara.”
The YPG is a group of Syrian Kurdish fighters that Turkiye views as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which it has outlawed as a “terrorist” organization.
Also blacklisted by Washington and Brussels, the PKK has waged an armed insurgency against the Turkish state since 1984.
But the YPG dominates the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurds’ de facto army in northeastern Syria, which spearheaded the fight there against the Daesh group.