UMUS SAHINGOZ

Died on 14th September after 330 Days on Death Fast


A female prisoner, 32 year old Umus Sahingoz, became the 34th political prisoner to die on the Death Fast against the introduction of isolation prisons in Turkey.

A member of the banned Marxist group Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front, she died in a house in an Istanbul suburb where about a dozen other left-wing militants are also fasting, the prisoner support group Ozgur Tayad said.

Sahingoz had served time at an Istanbul prison for breaching Turkey's anti-terrorism laws but was released in July.

The prisoners and their supporters began fasting last year to protest the prisoners' transfers from large, dormitory-style wards to prisons with one- or three-person cells. Prisoners say the new prison system leaves them isolated and vulnerable to beatings from guards.

Clashes broke out in December when security forces transferred inmates to the new prisons. Thirty inmates and two soldiers died in the clashes.