Turkey (text reproduced here; link to changing page): After being beaten into a coma three months ago for alleged “missionary propaganda,” Turkish Christian Yakup Cindilli has been slowly improving from a nearly helpless state. Cindilli, 32, was hospitalized the third week of October after four men linked with the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) beat him severely on his head and face for distributing New Testaments and “doing missionary work.” At a court hearing on December 17, about 60 MHP sympathizers gathered outside the courthouse in a show of support for two of Cindilli’s assailants who remain in jail. Metin Yildiran, president of the local MHP chapter, was released at an earlier court hearing. The crowd of sympathizers began shouting angrily when they learned that the defendants had been remanded back to jail custody following the hearing because, a defense lawyer stated, there was “hard evidence” against them. Cindilli, discharged on December 2 from the intensive care unit of Bursa State Hospital shortly after he began to emerge from total unconsciousness, is now at his family’s home and starting to speak, although he is still unable to care for himself, his attending doctor confirmed. (Compass Direct)