The grave of Mattia Ahmet Minguzzi, the child who was brutally murdered in the street in Istanbul on 24 January in a crime recorded on video, was desecrated the day before the start of the trial of the two accused of the crime, both minors, in a terrible event that has unleashed a profound debate in Turkey on the need to increase sentences for crimes committed by minors.
Turkish media and news agencies confirmed that the grave of the child, located in the Osmaniye cemetery in the European district of Bahçelievler,has been vandalised, with the flowers and the fence placed on the grave of the child broken and scattered around the site. For the moment, the perpetrator or perpetrators of this act of vandalism are unknown, and the police have launched an investigation. However, the victim’s family considers it to be an act of intimidation by relatives of the accused on the eve of thetrial that begins today for the crime, which has shocked Turkish society.
‘We have received the message, loud and clear. But we are not afraid,’ Rezan Epözdemir, spokesman and lawyer for Mattia’s family, told the Turkish press, condemning the attack on the grave and confirming that he had asked the judge for additional protection measures. In the face of these threats, the Minguzzi family arrived at the court today where the first hearing of the trial for the murder of the child was taking place, under police escort.
Two minors aged 15 and 16 are accused of the murder in January of Mattia Ahmet, a 15-year-old boy they did not know but who they stabbed and beat brutally and for no apparent reason in a market in the Kadıköy district, on the Asian coast of Istanbul, in an event that caused great shock and which was recorded by security cameras.
Death threats to the victim’s family
Although the family of Mattia – whose father was Italian and mother Turkish – have asked for the maximum sentence to be imposed on the accused and for them to be tried as adults, due to their age the prosecutor will only be able to request a maximum of 24 years imprisonment for them, which the judge could reduce to even 12 years if he takes into account other mitigating circumstances. It is precisely the fact that the two murderers will only receive reduced sentences and cannot be sentenced to life imprisonment for the atrocious crime, what has further aggravated the outrage among Turkish public opinion.
Since the day of Mattia Ahmet Minguzzi’s murder, the boy’s family claims to have been receiving death threats from people linked to the two main accused; for security reasons, they have been confined until the trial in two juvenile detention centres – one in Kayseri, in central Turkey, and the other in Samsun, on the country’s northern coast – but they were recently transferred to Maltepe prison in Istanbul for the duration of the trial, which is expected to conclude in 10 days.
The savage crime, for which an explanation is still being sought, has led the government to propose a reform of the law that would allow for harsher sentences – including life imprisonment – for minors convicted of crimes involving sexual assault or extreme violence, as is the case in other countries.
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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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