Turkish court sentences Quran course manager, employee to 75 years in total for torturing children

A court in the eastern province of Erzurum has sentenced the manager of a boarding Quran course to 39 years and an employee to 36 years in jail in a case concerning the torture of 13 children.

Tuesday March 14 2023 11:56 pm

Duvar English

A Turkish court has sentenced the manager of a boarding Quran course and an employee to jail for torturing 13 children in the eastern Erzurum’s Palandöken district.

The final hearing of the torture case took place on March 14 at the Erzurum 1st Heavy Penal Court, Demirören news agency reported. Course manager Nuhi Karababa and employee Uğur Güngör as well as the children’s families attended the hearing.

Following the defendants’ defenses, the court sentenced Karababa to 39 years in jail and Güngör to 36 years in jail.

The torture incident came out after one of the children staying at Hacı Bahattin Evgi Boys Boarding Quran Course told his parents that the teacher aide Hakan Aslankafa was threatening and sexually abusing him.

Upon this, the family filed a criminal complaint against Aslankafa on Dec. 2, 2021, leading to the detention of the defendant.

Aslankaya was jailed pending trial one day later on Dec. 3, 2021. The incident also led to the opening of a torture case, which included charges against manager Karaba and employee Güngör.

Aslankaya stands trial in both the sexual abuse case and torture case at the Erzurum 7th Penal Court of First Instance. In the first case, he was sentenced to 119.5 years in jail over charges of sexually abusing seven children, but the sentence was overturned by an appeals court on the grounds that the “children were not listened to at the courtroom, not enough number of witnesses were heard, and the term given to the defendant was too much.”