Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya confirmed that five people had been detained in connection with the 9 April attack on the grave of Mattia Ahmet Minguzzi – the 15-year-old boy murdered in the street in Istanbul last January – on the eve of the trial in which the two accused of the crime, both minors, were due to appear in court.
‘Five suspects who praised the perpetrators of the crime and sent threatening messages to the family (of Mattia) have been arrested by our security forces,’ the minister reported via social networks, as quoted by the Turkish media. Apparently, four of them may have previous criminal records.
In statements made yesterday outside the courthouse after the first hearing of the trial for the murder of Mattia Ahmet, the lawyer for the Minguzzi family, Rezan Epözdemir, denounced that the family has been receiving threats, insults and death threats since the death of their son more than two months ago, mainly through social networks and from people who claim to be friends of the two alleged murderers, which is why the family of the deceased had to go to court yesterday escorted by the police for security reasons.
‘This is an act of intimidation. But they are not going to scare us,’ said Epözdemir referring to the attack on Mattia’s grave. ‘We will continue our fight for justice until the end, as required by the rule of law. We will continue our legal fight for justice, for the truth to be revealed, so that Ahmet’s blood is avenged, so that the perpetrators receive the maximum punishment,’ he added.
Family calls for an end to the impunity of criminals
Epözdemir emphasised once again that the family is making every legal effort to ensure that the sentence against Mattia Ahmet’s killers is not reduced to 18 to 24 years – which the judge could even reduce to 12 years if he considers other mitigating circumstances – due to their status as minors. ‘Something similar already happened in the case of the murder of Münevver Karabulut (when his murderer, Cem Garipoğlu, was sentenced to only 24 years because he was a minor). The family wants an agreement to be reached so that no other Ahmet is murdered and this sense of impunity ends,’ said the family’s lawyer.
The desecration of Mattia Ahmet’s grave has deepened the feeling of outrage and impunity in Turkish society even further following the brutal murder of the child, who died on 24 January when a 15-year-old boy, furious because Mattia – whom he did not know at all – responded to him after provoking him, stabbing Mattia five times, mortally wounding him in the heart and lung, as the victim was buying skating equipment in a street market in Kadıköy, on the Asian coast of Istanbul; after falling to the ground with fatal injuries, another 16-year-old who was with him continued to hit Mattia on the head.
Mattia Ahmet Minguzzi was taken to hospital but after 14 days the doctors declared him brain dead. The terrible murder, for which society has yet to find a logical explanation, has left the parents devastated and has opened up a serious debate in Turkey about the need to increase sentences for crimes committed by minors, especially when they involve sexual assault or extreme violence.
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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