ECHR hit by cyber attack after ordering Turkey to release opposition leader
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.
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 reported on Wednesday.
“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.
Demirtaş, 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.