UN envoy urges Turkey to reform terrorism law

GENEVA, Apr 1 (Reuters) A United Nations human rights investigator has called on Turkey to reform its anti-terrorism law to avoid prosecuting individuals or organisations for non-violent acts.

''The definition of terrorist crimes should be brought in line with international norms and standards,'' Martin Scheinin, U N special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism said in a report.

Turkey's 1991 Anti-Terror Act should be amended to define ''more precisely what crimes constitute acts of terrorism ... confining them to acts of deadly or otherwise grave violence against persons or the taking of hostages,'' he said.

Scheinin said the term ''terrorist'' was still used in Turkey to refer to ''a large number of individuals, their organisations and activities'', even if no connection to crimes committed under an international definition of terrorism had been established.

Only a clear definition of terrorism could ensure ''that the crimes of membership, aiding and abetting and what certain authorities referred to as 'crimes of opinion' are not abused for other purposes than fighting terrorism,'' he added.

The Finnish lawyer's preliminary report follows a visit to Turkey in February, his first country visit since taking up the new post last August.

Its publication coincided with a blast in a rubbish bin that killed one person and injured five others near a bus station in an historic area of Istanbul on Friday, Turkish media reported.

Scheinin praised Turkey for declaring a zero-tolerance policy on torture and for providing safeguards for terror suspects such as giving them quick access to a lawyer. But he urged Ankara to institute an independent mechanism to investigate allegations of torture or ill-treatment of alleged terror suspects.

His report is expected to be taken up by the new U.N. Human Rights Council, set to open its first session in Geneva in June.

Militant groups including Kurdish separatists, Islamists and ultra-leftists have carried out attacks on civilians, security and military targets in Turkey in the past.

During last month's visit, Scheinin met senior officials and visited prisons in Ankara and Diyarbakir, the main town of Turkey's troubled southeast, whose mayor said on Friday that six people had been killed this week in clashes between Kurdish protesters and police.

Turkish officials say guerrillas of the banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) are behind the riots and want to foster a climate of fear and chaos.

More than 30,000 people, most of them Kurds, have been killed since the PKK took up arms for a Kurdish homeland in Turkey in 1984.

REUTERS SK RN0450