German-Kurdish Singer Sentenced to Six Years on Terror Charges

A German-Kurdish singer was sentenced on Wednesday to more than six years in prison in Turkey for membership of a terrorist organization, her lawyer said.

Saide Inac, who performs under the name Hozan Cane, was arrested in Turkey on June 23 while attending a campaign event for the Pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections.

The court in Edirne, northwest Turkey, sentenced her on Wednesday to six years and three months in jail, her lawyer Mustafa Pekoz said, adding that she would appeal.

According to her family, the prosecution relied on photographs of Inac with fighters from the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (Y.P.G.), which Turkey considers to be a “terrorist offshoot” of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (P.K.K.).

Inac was convicted of being a member of the P.K.K., which is blacklisted as a terror organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

But Inac’s relatives say the pictures were taken from a documentary she made about the persecution of the Yazidi religious minority by the Islamic State group in Iraq.

The imprisonment of the singer, who lives in Cologne, comes amid a thaw in relations between Turkey and Germany after a series of spats.

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