The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) reported that it was the victim of an hours-long cyber attack on Tuesday, hours after a ruling by the court for Turkey to release a jailed opposition politician.
ECHR website comes under cyber attack after ruling against Turkish opposition leader
STEPANAKERT, DECEMBER 24, ARTSAKHPRESS: No data was lost in the major attack that temporarily took the system down, a spokesperson the Strasbourg court told the French news agency AFP, Ahval News reports.
“Following the delivery of the Selahattin Demirtas v. Turkey (no. 2) judgment on 22 December, the website of the European Court of Human Rights was the subject of a large- scale cyberattack which has made it temporarily inaccessible,”a ECHR statement on the attack said.
“The Court strongly deplores this serious incident,” it added.
On Tuesday, the Grand Chamber of the ECHR ruled that Demirtaş’s four years in prison violated his rights under five different categories, including freedom of expression and liberty.
Demirtas, the former co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has been jailed since Nov. 2016 on a string of terror charges, which, if combined, could lead up to 140 years in prison.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday blasted the ECHR over the ruling, accusing the court of “defending a terrorist.’’
Ankara accuses the HDP of links to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed group that has been at war for Kurdish self rule in Turkey for almost 40 years.
