A suspect was arrested in Turkey as the alleged perpetrator of the significant damage caused to the grave of the child Mattia Ahmet Minguzzi, who was murdered at the end of last January in Kadıköy (Istanbul) by two minors who stabbed him in the street up to five times and beat him to death.
Turkish news agency DHA reported that the detainee, identified as Duran A., is 67 years old and apparently not related to the case, as had initially been suspected given that the desecration of the grave took place just the day before the family of Mattia – who has been receiving death threats from people close to those accused of the murder – appeared in court during the first hearing of the trial for the terrible crime.
Following his arrest, Duran A. was transferred to police headquarters and later appeared before a judge at the Bakırköy Courthouse (western Istanbul), who ordered him to be held in pre-trial detention on charges of ‘causing damage to places of worship and cemeteries.’
In his statement, the detainee said he was a homeless person who lives in the Bahçelievler district and that he used to go to the cemetery to drink water from a fountain located near the grave of Mattia Ahmet Minguzzi. According to Duran A. – who in his statement admitted that he knew who the child was and where his grave was because he had read about it in the newspapers – the incident occurred because that night he wanted to approach the grave out of curiosity, but due to the darkness he stumbled over the fence surrounding the grave and fell to the ground: in anger, he proceeded to beat it to pieces, destroying the grave.
Turkish Minister of the Interior, Ali Yerlikaya, confirmed the arrest of the suspect following an investigation carried out by the Istanbul Police Department into ‘the destruction of the grave of our child Mattia Ahmet Minguzzi, who lost his life after being stabbed in Istanbul’, and conveyed his condolences to the family. The brutal murder of Mattia, in the middle of the street and recorded by security cameras, has opened a serious debate in Turkey about the need to increase sentences for crimes committed by minors, given that the two attackers who took the child’s life were 15 and 16 years old.
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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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