On the other hand, the court condemned TAYAD member Cetin Guvenc to 4 months in prison plus damages for "insulting the security forces".
Guvenc's lawyer Taylan Tanay told bianet that the case was fouled, the ruling was given without considering all the facts.
The court's decision abides to the assumption that "it's not factual that the alleged crime was committed by the offenders standing trial".
Tanay commented, "that the aim of the court was to release the offenders, not to punish them". Anxious that this ruling will encourage further lynching, Tanay said that they will appeal for the decision.
Consequent attacks
On April 6 this year, 5 members of TAYAD in Trabzon distributing a leaflet about the isolation and hunger strikes in prisons were nearly lynched by a crowd consisting of nationalists.
The events then were sparked off when several people, alleged later to be plainclothes policemen by leftwing activists, shouted out in the town that the group had "burned the Turkish flag" and were "members of the pro-Kurdish guerilla group PKK".
Shortly after, local televisions carried the news that a Turkish flag had been burned down in the town bringing together a over a thousand people who attacked the TAYAD group which escaped from the beating by seeking shelter in a business center that was surrounded by the crowd.
The TAYAD members were then escorted out by the police and placed under custody after which five were arrested.
A subsequent attack occurred on April 11 when TAYAD members from different cities tried to make a press statement in the town center protesting the previous incident.
Lastly, TAYAD members were attacked by an angry crowd in a central park in the Black Sea town of Trabzon on June 25 while attempting to read out a press statement protesting conditions in the enhanced security F-type prisons.
The mob, numbering around 500, used fists and broken legs from chairs and tables to assault the TAYAD members in what the national media has dubbed as "a new lynch attempt" in recollection of a similar incident in April where five TAYAD members were nearly lynched.
The TAYAD group, fearing for their lives, sought temporary shelter under police protection in the public toilets of the Meydan Park and had to be forced out afterwards by policemen to board an armored vehicle that took them to the Trabzon police centre.(AO/EU)
