Suspected PKK Recruiter Charged in Germany

German federal prosecutors on Tuesday pressed charges against a 35-year-old Turkish man suspected of recruiting for the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) throughout Europe.

Prosecutors charged the man, identified only as Metin A., with "membership of a foreign terrorist organisation."

They said he worked from March 2008 until his arrest in July 2011 as a leading recruiter for the youth wing of the PKK, known as "Komalen Ciwan".

He was responsible, prosecutors charge, for persuading youths and young adults to join the group, first in Berlin, then throughout Germany and the rest of Europe.

A. was arrested on July 20, 2011 in Switzerland and handed over to German authorities on November 1, 2012.

He is in custody in Germany.

The PKK, which took up arms in its campaign for autonomy in southeast Turkey in 1984, is branded a terrorist group by Ankara and its Western allies. More than 40,000 people, mostly Kurds, have died since the conflict began.