Turkish President Abdullah Gul has pardoned former prime minister Necmettin Erbakan on the grounds of ill health.
The 81-year-old was placed under house arrest in May after a court ruled that his Islamist Refah Welfare Party, which was banned in 1998, had misused funds. Erbakan was initially convicted in 2002, but managed to postpone the sentence four times on health grounds. Turkish ruling party narrowly escapes ban ...
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Summer glow ... He then secured a retrial, but the court passed exactly the same sentence, which the Appeals Court upheld in April. Erbakan briefly served as Turkey's first Islamist prime minister until the secularist military forced him to step down in 1997. Gul and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and many of his legislators were members of Erbakan's party.
(Deutsche Welle)
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