TUNCELI, Turkey, April 5 (Reuters) - A Turkish court has jailed six people, five of them
elderly and in poor health, for aiding armed separatists in the country's mainly Kurdish
southeast, relatives said on Thursday.

They said the six, all from Tunceli province which has been the scene of intense fighting in
the past, had no ties to the rebels.

The defendants each received jail terms of three years and nine months.

The six were convicted by a state security court of aiding rebel fighters after a 1999 gun
battle in Tunceli province in which two PKK fighters were killed.

European concerns about the country's treatment of its ethnic minorities and alleged human
rights abuses in a bloody 16-year conflict with the rebels top a list of concerns that threaten
to slow Turkey's bid for European Union membership.

Eighty-year-old Emine Kiyancicek was jailed along with five others on March 26 after an
appeals court refused to overturn convictions of aiding the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Kiyancicek said she feared she would die in custody.

"I don't know (anything about) the PKK, I didn't help anybody," she told Reuters before
entering prison. "If I die in jail the state will be responsible."

Clashes between Turkish forces and rebels, which have killed over 30,000 people, have
tailed off sharply since Turkey captured PKK head Abdullah Ocalan and sentenced him to
death in 1999.

Turkey rejects his subsequent overtures for peace as a cynical ploy to save his neck and
maintains sporadic military offensives against rebels in nearby northern Iraq. Scattered
clashes with rebels still occur in parts of the southeast.
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The Kurdistan Observer
www.kurdistanobserver.com