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April 19, 2006
Germany: Muslim Honour Killing Family Wants Victim's Son
We described on April 13 the end of the trial of Ayhan Surucu, who was jailed on that day for nine years and three months. On February 7, 2005, then aged 18, he had walked up to his 23-year old sister Hatun, who was waiting at a bus stand in the Tempelhof district of Berlin. The young man pulled out a gun and shot his sister three times in the head.
Hatun was a mother of a child, the product of a forced marriage her parents had made for her when she had been only 15, to a cousin in their "home" country of Turkey. Hatun had left Turkey in May 1998, pregnant, and upon her return decided she did not want to live as a "Muslim girl". She refused to wear the hijab, she got her own apartment, she finished her schooling, which had been interrupted by the marriage, and applied to enroll at a technical college to study electronics.
She also decided that, as a German citizen, she would live as a German, wear make-up and date men, including non-Muslim Germans. For this "outrage" she was murdered publicly. Though she had turned her back on her Muslim upbringing, her Turkish/Kurdish parents ensured her funeral was Islamic, with verses from the Koran draped over her coffin. At her brother's trial, the judge had said that her family lived in Germany but "wasn't really living in Germany."
Today's Telegraph carries a sad postscript to this case. Hatun's sister has now applied for adoption rights for Hatun's six-year old son, Can. The German public are outraged.
When Ayhan Surucu was jailed, his two elder brothers, 25-year old Alpaslan and 26-year old Mutlu were acquitted. It had been argued by the prosecution that they had supplied the killer with the handgun which dispatched Hatun. The prosecution is appealing against the acquittal. The judge said their involvement could not be unequivocally ruled out.
The family, who had cheered in the courtroom when the acquittal was announced, announced it was going to hold a party. At the weekend a Berlin newspaper showed pictures of five members of the family strolling with a friend through their neighbourhood of Kreuzberg, smiling.
In Turkey a popular newspaper, Hurriyet ran a story with the caption "Their victory is the shame of the whole world." Other Turkish commentators noted how in their country such a crime would have been punished more severely.
Apart from the family, few people in Germany think that the application for adoption, requested by Hatun's sister, is justified. The Telegraph quotes a youth affairs senator, Klaus Borger. He said an orphaned child is normally given to close family members in its best interests yet "in this unusual case that would be absolutely wrong... the family's reaction to the verdict clearly shows that they - beyond any legal acknowledgement - were answerable for the murder of the boy's mother."
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at April 19, 2006 8:07 AM
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