The verdict by the Ankara was the third and latest conviction in a 13-year legal saga against the defendants, among them award-winning human rights activist Leyla Zana, on charges of collaborating in a bloody Kurdish insurgency in the country's southeast.

"The court stood by its original 1994 guilty verdict, but sentenced the former lawmakers to seven-and-half years under the new penal code" which came into effect in 2005, Zana's lawyer Yusuf Alatas said in televised remarks.

Since the defendants -- Zana, Hatip Dicle, Selim Sadak and Orhan Dogan -- have already spend 10 years in jail, they will not have to go back behind bars, Alatas said.

Friday's verdict also lifted a political ban imposed on Zana and her colleagues, thus paving the way for their return to active politics, the lawyer explained.

"They are not deprived of their public rights, there are no restrictions on them," Alatas said, but added that the former lawmakers would have to get permission from electoral authorities if they want to run in legislative elections scheduled for November.

Last week, the four former lawmakers were elected to a 60-member assembly of the country's main Kurdish party, the Democratic Society Party (DTP), in a move largely seen as a first step to playing a more prominent role in politics.

Alatas said he would appeal the verdict in both domestic and international courts, a reference to the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights, charging that the latest trial of the former lawmakers was flawed.

"The retrial did not aim to find the truth. It was just a formality," the lawyer said.

"The court referred to the defendants as 'convicts' throughout the trial and delivered the same verdict against them even though all evidence from the original trial was destroyed," he said.

Zana and her colleagues were first sentenced to 15 years in jail in 1994 for membership of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which has been fighting a 22-year bloody campaign for Kurdish self-rule in the country's southeast.

The charges were brought two years after Zana, the first Kurdish woman to be elected to Turkey's parliament, caused an uproar by first taking the oath in Turkish and then repeating in Kurdish to the protest of other legislators.

At the ceremony, she also wore a headband in yellow, green, and red, the colors of the PKK.

The four were adopted as prisoners of conscience by the European Union and the European Parliament awarded Zana its prestigious Sakharov human rights prize in 1995.

In March 2003, Zana and her co-defendants were allowed a retrial after their original conviction was condemned as unfair by the European Court of Human Rights in 2001.

The retrial upheld the original sentences amid accusations by rights activists and defence lawyers that the proceedings were again flawed.

However, the appeals court overturned their convictions and ordered a new trial in July 2004 a month after the four activists were released from jail.

The third and latest trial had begun in October 2004.