A gruesome torture diary detailing the abuse of a wife who was said to have killed herself has led to the reopening of the case, with her husband in the dock.
Victim Medine Kara’s family says the diary shows she did not take her own life but was, in fact, brutally killed five years ago.
The grim diary details a series of brutal beatings and knife attacks.
One horrific passage published by local media says: “I cannot erase those beatings, curses, insults, those marks on my body. I will never forget those knife marks on my leg for the rest of my life.”
Her family claims that she was strangled with a length of rope and then strung up to fake suicide.
Now justice officials have finally backed the family’s view, with Medine’s widower, Ahmet Kara, summoned before a judge – not as a witness but as a defendant.
He is denying accusations of ‘spousal injury and spousal abuse’, which could earn him up to eight years behind bars.
Medine, 37, was found hanging in a doorway in her home in Dortyol, Hatay Province, on 8th September 2017.
An autopsy at the time noted she had a “bruised area” on her body and redness on her lower back and neck.
But the report gave her cause of death as ‘hanging’, prompting the prosecutor to decide not to pursue charges and close the case.
But Medine’s relatives always doubted the suicide hypothesis and objected to the prosecutor’s decision.
After a court ruled there had been inconsistencies in the autopsy and the report from the Forensic Medicine Institute, the Criminal Peace Judgeship reversed the decision not to prosecute.
Turkish media have now reported some of the harrowing contents of Medine’s ‘torture diary’, which was part of the evidence that led to Kara being named a suspect.
Her family’s lawyer, Isa Ayanoglu, told local media: “The victim was first strangled with a rope and then hanged to stage a suicide.”
Reports also noted that Kara, upon ‘finding’ his wife hanging, first called his brother, Mehmet Kara, instead of emergency services.
When the alleged crime took place, the couple had been married for little under a year.
Kara’s next hearing will take place on 18th January.
