KURDISH political prisoner Gultan Kisanak remained behind bars today after a judge refused her release on the grounds that she once shared a cell with the co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Lawyers argued she should be freed from pre-trial detention, with the former mayor of Diyarbakir having spent five years in prison on trumped-up terrorism charges.

But the request was denied, along with that of 21 others in the so-called Kobane case against leading members of the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), on the grounds that the defendants were a flight risk.