Turkey has commuted the death sentence against rebel Kurd leader Abdullah Ocalan to life inprison,the Anatolia news agency reported.
The commutation comes two months after parliament abolished capital punishment.
The Ankara state security court ruled that Ocalan, the leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), would be imprisoned with no chance of an amnesty, the report said.
The judges ordered that a copy of the ruling be conveyed to Ocalan at the Imrali prison island in northwestern Turkey, where he is being kept in solitary confinement.
The abolition of the death sentence was one of the core articles in a series of comprehensive human rights laws adopted by parliament in August in a bid to strengthen the country's bid to join the European Union.
Ocalan, considered by Turkey as its public enemy number one, was sentenced to death in June 1999 for treason because of the PKK's armed campaign for Kurdish self-rule in the mainly Kurdish-populated southeast of the country. But his execution was put on hold pending a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights.
Parliament's decision to scrap capital punishment was welcomed by his family but condemned by relatives of soldiers killed fighting his rebels.
AFP