Arrested publisher Ragıp Zarakolu’s lawyers have filed a suit at the European Court of Human Rights to challenge the prosecutor’s orders that led to his arrest on Nov. 1, 2011, as part of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) trials, according to Hurriyet Daily News.

“[The KCK probe] is a politically [motivated] case filed by the AKP [Justice and Development Party] government, and the combination of the prosecutors’ and judges’ lack of independence and impartiality makes it difficult for a just and lawful verdict to be reached,” Zarakolu’s lawyer Özcan Kılıç told the HDN.

The suit filed at the European court pertains to such matters as treatment in detention, the legal and material basis for the arrest and access to case files and evidence, rather than the trial process itself, in accordance with the requirements prescribed in the fifth article of the European Convention on Human Rights, which established the court, according to Kılıç.

“The KCK trial is going to be the case with the largest number of suspects in Istanbul since the military coup of 1980. It is still too early to comment on the course of the trial,” Kılıç said.

Tuncay Özkan, another suspect in the ongoing Ergenekon trials, had already applied to the European court last week on the grounds that his right to a fair trial had been violated and that he had been detained for an extensive period. The European court, however, rejected his complaint regarding the right to a fair trial but gave an interim decision addressing claims regarding the period of his arrest, indicating that the charge would be examined later.