A Turkish court acquitted 405 Turkish soldiers of the charges of torture and rape of a Kurd woman, citing lack of evidence.

The Qendil Mountains of Kurdistan straddle the border dividing the free Iraqi portion of Kurdistan from the Iranian-occupied segment to the east. There is snow in at least some part of Qendil throughout the year, although, during the summer months, the temperature, even quite high up the mountains, can be nearly as inhospitable to human life as it is in downtown Baghdad. The sprawling Qendil Mountains are home to thousands of Kurdish villagers living in a number of small, somewhat isolated villages and, in years past, were a haven for Iraqi Kurdish peshmergas, the Kurdish soldiers, mountain warriors, who resisted successive attempts by Iraqi authorities to subjugate or eliminate the Kurdish people within Iraq’s borders. Over the past few years, Qendil has become a base for the fighters of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), an Iranian Kurdish movement associated with the PKK that has recently emerged as perhaps the most formidable challenge to the theocratic Iranian dictatorship.