A Turkish court today sentenced to death three leftist militants convicted of acts of terror - the first such judgment since parliament passed a law lifting the death penalty for most crimes.
The sentences were levied against members of the urban guerrilla group Revolutionary People's Liberation Party-Front (DHKP-C) for trying to subvert the constitutional order and shooting dead a Turkish soldier in Denizli province in 1998.
Parliament amended the constitution last month to restrict the death penalty to acts of terror and treason carried out in times of war, a move to bring its laws into line with Europe.
EU candidate Turkey has not carried out an execution since 1984, but scrapping capital punishment altogether has been high on the agenda in its relations with the EU since Kurdish rebel leader Abdullah Ocalan was sentenced to death in 1999.
Ocalan, accused of leading a violent campaign for self-rule in the mainly Kurdish southeast that killed more than 30,000 people, remains in an island prison awaiting a European Court of Human Rights appeal on his sentence.
DHKP-C is the largest of Turkey's many extreme left-wing factions and claimed responsibility in September for a suicide attack on an Istanbul police station that killed two officers, an Australian tourist and the bomber.
Ankara considers DHKP-C a terrorist group and blames it for organising prison uprisings and a mass hunger strike against prison conditions that has claimed more than 40 lives.
Tuesday's ruling by a state security court in the western city of Izmir included life imprisonment for four of the 22 defendants, the state-run Anatolian news agency said.