The conditional release of Zeliha Ustabaş, who was held at Sincan Women’s Closed Prison, was postponed for another nine months by the Administration and Observation Board. The board issued five negative assessments concerning Ustabaş, who had been unable to benefit from her right to release since 24 July 2024. Her next assessment date was set for 8 July 2027, while the date on which her full sentence would end was 24 July 2027. Ustabaş’s lawyer Hülya Yıldırım said the decision had effectively eliminated her client’s right to conditional release. Yıldırım argued that her client was arrested in 2015 on the basis of a witness statement that contained no concrete accusation. She said one of the grounds used to block Ustabaş’s release was the allegation that she had failed to facilitate search and count procedures by prison staff. However, she noted that Ustabaş was acquitted in the criminal case opened over the same incident and that the court found a search in which prison staff emptied a trash bin onto the floor to be disproportionate. Yıldırım said the monitoring forms on which the board based its assessments were not shared with lawyers or the enforcement judgeship, making effective review of the decisions impossible. She noted that although the law provided for a maximum assessment interval of six months, a regulation extended this period to 12 months. She said the release of nine women prisoners at Sincan Women’s Closed Prison had been blocked on similar grounds and that only two women prisoners had been able to benefit from conditional release since 2021. Yıldırım also objected to the application of the 2021 sentence-execution regulation to prisoners convicted before it entered into force and recalled that they held a protest outside the Justice Ministry every Monday against obstacles to release.
31 October 2026
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