Turkish riot police on Saturday arrested around seventy people after violently breaking up a demonstration in Istanbul to protest the alleged torture of a Kurdish party member by police officers, the NTV news channel reported. The police intervention also left several people wounded, it added.
Some 300 protestors had gathered in the Fatih district, in Istanbul's European quarter, to make a press statement denouncing the alleged maltreatment of Gulbahar Gunduz, a provincial official of the pro-Kurdish Democratic People's Party (DEHAP), by police.
However, police ordered the crowd to disperse, and moved in on the demonstrators when they refused to do so, it added.
NTV showed officers hitting the protestors with truncheons and firing tear gas towards the crowd.
In retaliation, some of the protestors pelted police with stones, breaking the windows of cars passing on a nearby road, the channel added. (Albawaba.com)
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