Zana, jailed over alleged terrorist links, boycotted the hearing

The defendants have been in prison since 1994, convicted of belonging to the Kurdish paramilitary group, PKK.

The case was reopened last year after the European Court of Human Rights ruled the original trial was unfair.

A European Commission spokesman has condemned the verdict and said it would be taken into account in considering Turkey's European Union entry bid.

It is a disgrace - this is an insult to the EU which is asking Turkey to be more democratic Luigi Vinci European Parliament member

"The Commission strongly deplores today's verdict by the Ankara state security court confirming the condemnation of Mrs Leyla Zana to serve her full prison term," spokesman Jean-Christophe Filori told a news conference.

The Commission is to issue a report later this year on whether Turkey is ready to start EU entry talks.

Boycott

The four former Kurdish MPs - who deny the charges - have been boycotting the hearings, saying nothing has changed.

Their lawyer, Yusuf Alatas, said they would appeal against the verdict which, he said, was delivered after a retrial as unfair as the original one.

"The court referred to our defendants as 'convicts' from day one," he told reporters outside the Ankara state security court after the ruling.

"That finished it all. "We have tried for 13 months (to win their release), even though we knew our efforts would prove futile."

Human rights activists have also been criticising the length of the retrial, and the lawyers' lack of opportunities to thoroughly question prosecution witnesses.

Mrs Zana and her co-defendants, Orhan Dogan, Hatip Dicle and Selim Sadak, could be freed next year, having already served 10 years in jail.

Blow

Luigi Vinci, a member of the European Parliament who attended the retrial expressed anger and disappointment.

"It is a disgrace," he told reporters afterwards.

"This is an insult to the EU which is asking Turkey to be more democratic. This is an insult to the European Court of Human Rights."

Turkey is hoping to get a firm date to begin accession negotiations at an EU summit in December.

Mrs Zana became a high-profile dissident when she was awarded the European Parliament's Sakharov Peace Prize in 1995 - a year after her conviction in Turkey.

The BBC's Steve Bryant in Istanbul says Mrs Zana, a slight but determined woman, has become a symbol for the human rights abuses that came alongside Turkey's conflict with the PKK.

She rocketed to prominence in Turkey in 1991, when she spoke in Kurdish during her oath of allegiance to parliament.

Within three years, she was in jail.