"Ocalan undergoes medical check-ups every day," a senior justice ministry official, Turker Tok, told AFP. "He has neither cardiological problems nor other serious health problems."

Ankara has informed the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture about the latest state of Ocalan's health, he said.

The prosecutor responsible for the prison island of Imrali in northwestern Turkey, where the 57-year-old Ocalan is the sole inmate, has also denied the reports, one of Ocalan's lawyers in Turkey said.

"The prosecutor assured us about his good health on behalf of the state, but we do not know what has happened," Irfan Dundar told AFP.

The prosecutor gave the lawyers a medical report on Ocalan's health dated February 7, the day he allegedly suffered the heart attack, which did not mention any cardiological problem, Dundar said.

"We know that he has been having respiratory difficulties for some time and that he also developed some dermatological problems recently," he said.

Three Italian lawyers of Ocalan said he was in serious condition after suffering a heart attack Tuesday, Italy's ANSA news agency reported Wednesday.

They appealed to the European Union and the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture to allow both them and his family to see Ocalan.

The rebel leader was condemned to death in 1999 for the bloody separatist campaign his outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has waged in predominantly Kurdish southeastern Turkey.

The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 2002 after Ankara abolished capital punishment as part of efforts to align with EU norms.

The PKK and its sympathizers have often denounced Ocalan's isolation and staged violent protests calling for his removal from solitary confinement.

The Kurdish conflict has claimed some 37,000 lives since 1984 when the PKK, blacklisted as a terrorist group by Turkey as well as the EU and the United States, took up arms for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast.