Police detained between 50 and 60 demonstrators on Sunday when they tried to hold an unauthorized protest against a controversial new prison regime that has caused bloody Turkish jail riots.
Anatolya news agency reported that the demonstrators, relatives of Turkish prisoners, were held in the city's Kadikoy district after refusing to disperse and for trying to hold a sit-in.
Last week 31 people died during bloody jail clashes when authorities clamped down on protests over prison reforms which envisage moving prisoners to new two or three-person cells from old-style large dormitories. Protestors fear the move will mean greater harassment and torture, especially of left-wing political prisoners.
Turkish Justice Minister Hikmet Sami Turk on Saturday denied allegations by a human rights group that inmates transferred to the country's new jails had suffered torture or ill-treatment.
The denial follows a statement by the Turkish Human Rights Association, that political prisoners who had recently been locked up in the new prisons had been subject to violent and humiliating treatment -- ISTANBUL (AFP)
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