Story By: Feza Uzay, Sub-Editor: Joe Golder, Agency: Newsflash
A married Turkish cop has been jailed for life after shooting his female police officer lover dead and then putting her gun in her hand to make it appear as if she had shot at him first.
Policeman Muharrem Yilmaz killed his lover Merve Unal, 27, after shooting her 16 times in what he claimed was self-defence in the south-eastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir.
He claimed that they had had an argument after he looked at a WhatsApp message on her phone and found she was being promoted to the drugs squad, which he did not feel was an appropriate job for a woman.
He told the court: “I loved her, and I was going to divorce my wife in order to marry her. She was then given a position in the security branch working with the drug squad. I didn’t want her to work in that branch and we had an argument.”
He then claimed that she pulled out a gun and shot at him three times.
However, the court said that his description of what had happened was unlikely, given the fact that she was a top marksman with a perfect record in target practice, and that firing three shots at somebody at close range meant it was unlikely she would miss.
The judges at the country’s top criminal court said the far more likely scenario was that she discovered her boyfriend was married, and that he shot her during the argument.
They cited the autopsy report that showed the young woman had wounds on both arms indicating she had been trying to protect herself rather than shooting at him as he claimed.
The court found that after emptying his magazine and killing her, he put her gun in her hand and fired three bullets to give the impression that she had fired at him so he could justify killing her in self-defence.
The young woman, who had been hit with 16 bullets, had been taken to hospital after being shot but was declared dead and was later buried in the district of Mezitli in the coastal city of Mersin by her family including her retired police officer father Namık Unal.
Muharrem Yilmaz was sentenced to life in jail.
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