Renowned Syrian singer Omar Souleyman was released on Friday after being detained for allegedly promoting terrorism, his lawyer said.
Souleyman, whose mix of folk and electronic music accompanied by Arabic and Kurdish lyrics have won him a cult following around the world, was detained on Wednesday at his home in Sanliurfa, southern Turkey.
His lawyer, Resit Tuna, said Souleyman was released by a court on Friday morning and is now at home. “The prosecution will decide whether to prosecute Omar Souleyman,” he said. “They won’t make that decision right away.
For now, Mr Souleyman is free but the state will decide what will happen in the future
Resit Tuna,
lawyer
“For now, Mr Souleyman is free but the state will decide what will happen in the future.”
Mr Tuna said that police had initially sought to deport Souleyman after questioning him over a claim that he advocated terrorism. “They gave that up now and he’s free and at home, there’s no urgent situation,” the lawyer said.
Turkish media previously reported that Souleyman, 55, was arrested on suspicion of having links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has waged a 37-year conflict in Turkey and is considered a terrorist organisation by Ankara and most western states.
After his release, the Birgun newspaper reported that his arrest related to alleged remarks made in Germany in which Souleyman praised jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.
Souleyman’s manager and producer, Mina Tosti, told The National earlier that such a claim could have been made by a jealous rival.
“He has many enemies and people who envy him who would do this,” she said. “This is probably a similar scenario now – that someone has made a tip-off.”
Souleyman, a former wedding singer from Hassakeh, a Kurdish-majority region of north-east Syria, has lived in Turkey since the Syrian civil war began 10 years ago.
He was arrested at his home in Karakopru, a district to the north-west of Sanliurfa city, which lies close to the Syrian border.
With his trademark red and white kaffiyeh and sunglasses, Souleyman broke on to the international scene in 2011 and has since appeared at festivals around the world, including Glastonbury in the UK and the Nobel Peace Prize concert in Norway.
He has collaborated with artists including Bjork, Four Tet and Blur’s Damon Albarn while his YouTube videos have received tens of millions of views. He is believed to have recorded more than 500 albums.
An Arab and a Sunni Muslim, Souleyman has previously spoken out on behalf of all Syrians, regardless of ethnicity or religion.
Turkish media suggested he was arrested over ties to the PKK or its Syrian offshoot, known as the YPG.
Although the YPG is not labelled a terrorist organisation by the West, Turkey considers it to be inextricably linked to the PKK.
Beginning in 2016, Ankara has launched three military campaigns in northern Syria against the YPG, while also fighting the PKK in Turkey and northern Iraq.
In recent years, tens of thousands of people have been detained on terrorism charges in Turkey, including members of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, or HDP, which is Turkey’s third-largest political party. It evolved out of the Kurdish movement and has been accused of links to the PKK – a charge it denies.
Global state-owned investor ranking by size
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Attacks on Egypt’s long rooted Copts
Egypt’s Copts belong to one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, with Mark the Evangelist credited with founding their church around 300 AD. Orthodox Christians account for the overwhelming majority of Christians in Egypt, with the rest mainly made up of Greek Orthodox, Catholics and Anglicans.
The community accounts for some 10 per cent of Egypt’s 100 million people, with the largest concentrations of Christians found in Cairo, Alexandria and the provinces of Minya and Assiut south of Cairo.
Egypt’s Christians have had a somewhat turbulent history in the Muslim majority Arab nation, with the community occasionally suffering outright persecution but generally living in peace with their Muslim compatriots. But radical Muslims who have first emerged in the 1970s have whipped up anti-Christian sentiments, something that has, in turn, led to an upsurge in attacks against their places of worship, church-linked facilities as well as their businesses and homes.
More recently, ISIS has vowed to go after the Christians, claiming responsibility for a series of attacks against churches packed with worshippers starting December 2016.
The discrimination many Christians complain about and the shift towards religious conservatism by many Egyptian Muslims over the last 50 years have forced hundreds of thousands of Christians to migrate, starting new lives in growing communities in places as far afield as Australia, Canada and the United States.
Here is a look at major attacks against Egypt's Coptic Christians in recent years:
November 2: Masked gunmen riding pickup trucks opened fire on three buses carrying pilgrims to the remote desert monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor south of Cairo, killing 7 and wounding about 20. IS claimed responsibility for the attack.
May 26, 2017: Masked militants riding in three all-terrain cars open fire on a bus carrying pilgrims on their way to the Monastery of St. Samuel the Confessor, killing 29 and wounding 22. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
April 2017: Twin attacks by suicide bombers hit churches in the coastal city of Alexandria and the Nile Delta city of Tanta. At least 43 people are killed and scores of worshippers injured in the Palm Sunday attack, which narrowly missed a ceremony presided over by Pope Tawadros II, spiritual leader of Egypt Orthodox Copts, in Alexandria's St. Mark's Cathedral. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks.
February 2017: Hundreds of Egyptian Christians flee their homes in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, fearing attacks by ISIS. The group's North Sinai affiliate had killed at least seven Coptic Christians in the restive peninsula in less than a month.
December 2016: A bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt's main Coptic Christian cathedral in Cairo kills 30 people and wounds dozens during Sunday Mass in one of the deadliest attacks carried out against the religious minority in recent memory. ISIS claimed responsibility.
July 2016: Pope Tawadros II says that since 2013 there were 37 sectarian attacks on Christians in Egypt, nearly one incident a month. A Muslim mob stabs to death a 27-year-old Coptic Christian man, Fam Khalaf, in the central city of Minya over a personal feud.
May 2016: A Muslim mob ransacks and torches seven Christian homes in Minya after rumours spread that a Christian man had an affair with a Muslim woman. The elderly mother of the Christian man was stripped naked and dragged through a street by the mob.
New Year's Eve 2011: A bomb explodes in a Coptic Christian church in Alexandria as worshippers leave after a midnight mass, killing more than 20 people.
