No justice a decade later for Turkish girl raped and murdered by three men

Müzeyyen Yüce / DUVAR 

In 2009, 15-year-old Sezgi Kırıt left home and said she was going to the market. A man she met on Facebook and two of his friends took Sezgi to one of their homes, where she was given drugs and alcohol and was raped by the three men. They found her dead the next morning. More than a decade later, her rapists and murderers have still not been properly punished for their crimes. 

In lieu of calling an ambulance, the men transported her body from Antalya to the province of Isparta and left it in a field. 10 days later, her half-naked body was found. A medical report traces of the sperm of three different men in her body, yet it also indicated that the reason of death was unclear. What was not included on the report was the two-centimeter hole in her neck and her broken teeth. She was initially buried in a cemetery for people with unknown identities until her family filed a missing person's report and appeared on television program. They were able to get their daughter's body and bury her in Antalya. 

The killers were caught after their vehicle was found on surveillance cameras and based on Sezgi's Facebook messaging, but were released due to a lack of evidence. Her family's lawyer Sibel Önder did not back down, and spent seven years struggling to get Sezgi's killers convicted. During this period, the prosecutor was changed seven times. 

Due to Önder's efforts, the National Institute of Criminology and Forensic Science prepared a report which concluded that Sezgi was forcibly raped and killed. An indictment was prepared and one of the men's mothers was also arrested for assisting in the coverup. Prior to a hearing, one of the suspects died of a heart attack, and the other two suspects tried to blame the entire thing on the dead man. 

The trial lasted two years. An Antalya court sentenced the men to life in prison while the mother was sentenced to 28 years. When the decision was announced, Sezgi's mother Hanife Kırıt breathed deeply and said “I can finally visit my daughter's gravestone.” 

But justice didn't last long, and another Antalya court threw out the verdict. The men were released and retried. Hanife found out that she had cancer, but still attended every hearing and endured listening to details regarding the torture that her daughter was put through before she was killed. 

One of the suspects, who had an extensive criminal record, was sentenced to one year in prison while the other received three years, neither on murder charges. The mother received a total of five years. In this trial, the answer to the question “who killed Sezgi?” was never found. 

While these men who put Sezgi through this savagery walk freely among us, Hanife Kırıt is spending the last stage of her life still seeking justice for daughter. The case is now in the Supreme Court.