Two Czech citizens, sentenced in 2017 to more than six years in prison for fighting alongside Kurdish militias, were released by Turkey and arrived in Prague at the end of the day on Friday, July 24, CTK reported.
Read also: Syria: five pro-Iran fighters killed in Israeli strikes, according to an NGO
Miroslav Farkas and Marketa Vselichova were each sentenced to 6 years and 3 months in prison, on the charge of collaboration with the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), considered a terrorist organization by Ankara. " I spoke last September about the case of these two Czech citizens in person with Turkish President (Recep Tayyip) Erdogan and I am glad that we finally came to a solution to this problem, without any conditions or promises ", s 'Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis was congratulated on Friday in a statement.
Half of their initial sentence served
On November 13, 2016, Turkish security forces arrested the then-30-year-old man and the 24-year-old woman in Sirnak province in the southeast of the country near the Iraqi and Syrian borders, with, according to Turkish prosecutors, photos with members of the Kurdish YPG and YPG military music in their phones.
Accusing them of " belonging to an armed terrorist group ", the Turkish prosecutor had requested a sentence of up to 15 years in prison against the two Czechs, who claimed their innocence and claimed to be humanitarian workers. Mr Farkas and Ms Velichova spent 44 months and 11 days in prison in Turkey, which is just over half of the sentence they received.
