A court in Turkey has sentenced two security guards who raped a terrified teenager before executing her and her boyfriend in cold blood to decades behind bars.
The Kirsehir Heavy Penal Court sentenced evil pair Sefik Ekici and Sami Aydogan to two counts of aggravated life imprisonment plus 37 years and six months in prison each.
This was after finding them guilty of the execution-style killing of young couple Hasan Aydogan and Seyma Demir, whose bodies they dumped in the Kizilirmak River.
The court gave them two aggravated life terms for intentional homicide, 22 years and six months in prison for deprivation of liberty, and 15 years in jail for aggravated sexual assault.
In Turkey, the minimum non-parole term for a double aggravated life prisoner is 36 years.
The crime took place in a rural part of Kirsehir District on 25th March last year (2022), after the off-duty security guards pulled the couple over as they drove in their car.
Posing as police officers, the pair handcuffed Hasan, 21, and 18-year-old Seyma after they got out of the vehicle.
They then bundled them into their own car and drove them for 50 kilometres (31 miles) to a stretch of the Kizilirmak River near the village of Kortulu.
There, Ekici, 35, and 32-year-old Aydogan raped Seyma before shooting her and her boyfriend dead.
They then dumped their bodies in the river.
The killers, who were both employed by Kirsehir Municipality at the time, proceeded to clean the car and abandoned it in the woods before fleeing the scene.
After the couple’s families reported their relatives’ disappearance to the police, officers received a report of the abandoned vehicle.
Inside, they found a bag containing the couple’s mobile phones and other personal belongings of Seyma, who was training to be a senior caregiver at the time of her killing.
Ekici and Aydogan were arrested after police discovered Aydogan was the car’s owner.
The pair confessed to dumping the bodies in the river under questioning.
Seyma’s body washed ashore three days after the crime.
She was found with her hands cuffed behind her back, her feet tied together with rope, and a gunshot wound to the back of her head.
Hasan’s body was not found until more than two months after the crime, when it was pulled from the river.
Earlier reports described Ekici as the nephew of Kirsehir Mayor Selahattin Ekicioglu.
In court, he claimed the crime was masterminded by Aydogan, but both ended up receiving the same sentence.
Local media did not reveal the motive.
Femicide is a growing problem in Turkey, particularly after the country officially quit the Istanbul Convention in July 2021.
According to data from the ‘Monument Counter’, which is “a digital memorial for women killed by violence” and is updated daily, 393 women were killed by men in 2022, while 45 femicides have taken place in Turkey so far this year.
