Hundreds of people were sentenced to life in prison in Turkey on Thursday in a trial linked to a 2016 coup attempt. CNN reports this.
A total of 475 defendants were tried in the high-profile case that focused on the events in the Akinci Air Base in Ankara, which the prosecutor argued was the main command center for the coup plot.
Most of the defendants received at least one life sentence. Nineteen were sentenced to 79 counts of life in prison without parole after being convicted of charges of attempting to overthrow the constitutional order, assassinate the President and murder, according to the state news agency Anadolu.
Seventy people were acquitted, the state news agency said.
"The Turkish judiciary continues to hold the traitors to account," Turkish Justice Minister Abdulhamit Gul said on Twitter after the court announced the verdicts.
"No one should doubt that justice will be served and that law and democracy will win," he added.
More than 250 people were killed in the July 2016 coup attempt, many of them civilians.
