A cousin of the Kurdish Hüseyin Baybasin, who was sentenced to life in the Netherlands, was the victim of an apparent targeted attack on a taxi in Düsseldorf on Tuesday. That reports the German local newspaper Rheinische Post and is confirmed by Baybasin’s Dutch lawyer, Adèle van der Plas.
The cousin, who according to the German Public Prosecution Service is Dutch, was previously present at a demonstration in front of the Dutch Consulate General of sympathizers of Baybasin. They see him as a political prisoner who is a victim of Turkish pressure on Dutch justice because of his fight for Kurdish independence.
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The victim of the two escaped gunmen in Düsseldorf is forty years old and is described in German media as an influencer, with an Instagram account with 180,000 followers and almost 40,000 on TikTok. He was sitting in the passenger seat and was allegedly shot ten times, the police reported to Rheinische Post. He has undergone surgery and is still said to be in a life-threatening condition. Another passenger fled the scene and is still missing, just like the gunmen. A third passenger and the driver were interviewed by the police.
On social medium The Telegraph. That X-post was later deleted, but his cousin’s TikTok account does reference it with a screenshot. Lawyer Adèle van der Plas, who has been representing Baybasin for more than two decades, tells NRC that the messages attributed to her client do not come from him and are not drawn up in his name. “Not an issue at all.”
Baybasin was sentenced to life imprisonment by the court in Den Bosch in 2002 for, among other things, complicity in murder, drug trafficking and participation in a criminal organization. The Supreme Court rejected a request for review in 2018. He is now eligible for early releasepossibly next year.
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