A Turkish court rejected an appeal on Monday by the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) for the release of their jailed former leader and presidential candidate.
Selahattin Demirtaş, who has been in jail for a year and a half on security charges and faces a jail sentence of up to 142 years if convicted, was nominated by HDP as a presidential candidate earlier this month.
The appeal rejected by an Ankara court, which suggested there would be a lack of the adequate judicial controls necessary to free the politician.
Last week, the HDP applied for Demirtaş to be released before next month's snap election.
Demirtaş, via his lawyers, has responded by sending a series of tweets questioning the validity of the decision.
"I thought the cases against those who had been targeted with falsified evidence by FETÖ were to be dropped?" wrote Demirtaş. U.S.-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen's network, referred to by the Turkish authorities as the Fethullahist Terrorist Organization (FETÖ) attempted to topple down Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan by a military coup but it failed.
"It came out that all of the so-called evidence used to lock me up was falsified, and that all of it had been made up by FETÖ prosecutors," said Demirtaş. "But everyone is turning a blind eye."
