Pinar Selek's third trial is slated to begin on February 9, after over a decade of legal proceedings.

"The fact that the trial is still going on after 12 years and two acquittals contravenes human rights," Helene Fautre, vice president of the European-Turkish Group at the European parliament, told Deutsche Welle.

Selek is accused of belonging to the outlawed PKK, the Kurdish separatist organization, and laying a bomb in their name in Istanbul's busy spice bazaar in 1998, killing seven people and injuring over one hundred more. She denies the charges against her and claims she is being politically persecuted because of what she has written.

When Selek was arrested two days after the blast, she was working on a potentially controversial book about the Kurdish movement and why they had chosen a path of violence in their struggle for independence.

At the time, the PKK was waging war against Turkey and the authorities were determined to capture their leader Abdullah Öcalan. Selek had been speaking to people in the PKK as part of her research and she said that, upon her initial arrest, the police were much more interested in the book than the bomb.

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  Selek was writing about why the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has opted for violence

"They arrested me and took all my documents. They started asking me questions about the people I'd been speaking to. I never wrote their names down," she said. She knew her reputation as a researcher would be ruined if she did.

Police persecution

Selek said in an interview with Deutsche Welle that, during her interrogation, the police began to torture her for the information.

"They hung me on the wall in a Palestinian sling," she recalled. "They passed electroshocks through my brain, they dislocated my shoulder - lots of things. I just told myself, just resist for two minutes, two minutes, two more minutes. That's how it happened, two minutes at a time."

Selek said that with the trial coming up, the anxiety she felt during the torture comes back to her like an echo. A recent psychological assessment showed that she is suffering from post-traumatic stress.