STRASBOURG, Feb 8 (AFP) - 18h35 - The European Court of Human Rights Tuesday censured Turkey for violating the right to free speech of a Kurd, jailed because a book he published was considered separatist Kurdish propaganda.

"The tenor of the book was not such as to justify the applicants criminal conviction," the court ruled, according to a press release.Muzaffer Erdost, now 73, a Turkish national belonging to the Kurdish minority, was jailed for a year in 1997 for his book published a year earlier and relating how extrajudicial persecution had led to bloodshed in the Kurdish town of Sivas in 1978, 1993 and 1996.

A public prosecutor had applied to the Ankara State Security Court for an order for the book, called "Three Sivases, in the centre of the pressure being exerted for the imposition of a new [Treaty of] Sevres on Turkey," to be seized, saying it contained separatist propaganda representing a threat to Turkish state integrity.

The largely Kurdish area of southeastern Turkey has been seeking autonomy, leading to large-scale repression by Turkish authorities of Kurdish militants.

Under the 1920 Treaty of Sevres, part of the post-World War I settlement, the victorious allies promised autonomy for the Kurds of southeastern Turkey.

The court ruled that the jail sentence and the book's confiscation "did not meet a pressing social need and was accordingly not necessary in a democratic society."

It said there had been a violation of Article 10 of the European Human Rights Convention covering freedom of expression.

It acknowledged that passages from the book contained references to people from different ethnic origins and to the founding of a Kurdish state on the collapse of the Republic of Turkey.

"However, those references were quotations from articles in the press which could not of themselves justify the interference with the applicants right to freedom of expression," it found.

The court also ruled that the plaintiff had been denied the right to a fair hearing "on account of the State Security Courts lack of independence and impartiality."

It awarded him 7,500 euros (9,600 dollars) damages plus costs.

Turkey's southeast suffered years of violence with some 37,000 deaths during a government military campaign against rebels of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Thousands of mainly Kurdish dissidents were believed to have been killed extrajudicially.

The PKK, now called KONGRA-GEL, called off a unilateral ceasefire with Ankara last June and sporadic fighting has resumed.

Turkey is keen to join the European Union, but has come under EU criticism for its perceived human rights record.

The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe Member States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights.