Light Sentence for Officer Shooting Youth "Who Did Not Stop"

On 29 September 2006, Murat Kasap (19) and Reşit Seven, who were on a motorbike, were shot at by police officer Halil İbrahim Yıldırım when they did not heed an order to stop.

Kasap died and Seven was wounded.

Sultan Boyoğlu, a relative of Kasap's said, "When Murat and his friend Reşit Seven went for a ride on the motorbike, they had an accident. When Murat saw the police, he wanted to run away in a panic because he did not have a license. Although his friend said, 'I will bring him to you, don't shoot', police officers shot him in the back."

Not punishment, a reward

Police officer Yıldırım was detained for two months and then released. In court, he has now received a one year 8 month prison sentence, which has been deferred.

In a written statement, Ethem Açıkalın, president of the Adana branch of the Human Rights Association (İHD), has called this "a sentence like a reward".

District authorities quick to exonerate officer

The İHD reports that a district police investigation into the event found that Yıldırım had not shot Kasap on purpose. When he did not heed the order to stop, Yıldırım is said to have run after him and have tripped. The gun is alleged to have gone off when he tried to get up.

The report further said that there would be no permission to investigate the officer.

The IHD says, however, that at least five bullets were used; this has been proven by site examination and witness accounts. The district report also ignored the forensic medical report, which said that the gun did not go off as a result of a collision.

From court to court...

The court decided to try the officer after an objection to the district decision. Yıldırım was first tried at the Ceyhan 2nd Criminal Court of First Instance for "negligently causing the death of a person".

This court decided that the case needed to be evaluated as a purposeful killing and sent the case to the Ceyhan Heavy Penal Court after the first hearing on 29 November 2006.

The heavy penal court decided on 19 January 2007 that there was no intent to kill and that the suspect should be tried for negligently causing a death. It thus sent the case to the Supreme Court of Appeals.

Joint attorney Gülşen Battal objected at the Osmaniye Heavy Penal Court, which ranks higher than the Ceyhan Heavy Penal Court.

The Osmaniye court accepted the objection, saying that there was a possibility of the act having been deliberate. It thus decreed that the Ceyhan Heavy Penal Court was to hear the case.

According to Açıkalın, the case, which had its first hearing at the Ceyhan Heavy Penal Court on 1 August 2007, was stopped there.

"After the file had had two hearings and three different courts, the judges remembered Law 4483 on the Prosecution of Civil Servants and asked the district authorities for permission to try the police officer. It took until 29 June 2009 for a court decree to emerge, and the punishment is like a reward to the police officer."

Hypocrisy of judiciary

Açıkalın added, "One the one hand you give a police officer who killed a person a sentence like a prize, on the other hand 86 children who threw stones at police officers and shouted slogans in support of the PKK and Abdullah Öcalan receive a total of 400 years and 11 months imprisonment. You also leave these children in prison for months and years, and then you claim that there is equal justice for everyone in this country."

In a similar case in Izmir, a young man, Baran Tursun, was shot and killed in a car when allegedly not heeding a police order to stop. The defendant police officer, Oral Emre Atar, received a sentence of 2 years and 1 month imprisonment.

In Antalya, another young man, Çağdaş Gemik, was also killed for "not stopping". Police officer Mehmet Ergin is still on trial. (EZÖ/AG)