The first hearing has taken place in the trial of five men accused of torturing and murdering two Turkish and one German Christian in Turkey in April.
Turkish citizen, Necati Aydin, and German citizen, Tilman Geske, were found tied to chairs by their hands and legs with their throats cut in a Christian publishing house where they worked.
The second Turkish citizen, Ugur Yuksel, later died in hospital from multiple stab wounds. The five men standing trial, all aged between 19 and 20, came before the courts in Malatya, southeast Turkey, last Friday. They have all confessed to the murders.
During the hearing at the tightly-secured Third Criminal Court, legal representatives for the families of the murdered men and the Turkish Protestant churches objected to the use of 16 out of 31 case files presented by the public prosecutor.
These files focused on the religious activities of the murdered men and published addresses for 40 other Christians associated with the victims.
The families’ lawyers argued that this endangers the Christians listed and raised fears that the presentation of the prosecution will open the way for the defence lawyers to plead provocation, even though mobile phone records and emails sent by the defendants illustrate advanced planning of this attack and the intention to attack other Christians.
The five defendants claimed in their confessions that the victims goaded them by insulting Islam and the Turkish nation, and alleged that the murdered men declared they supported the separatist Kurdish terror group PKK.
The legal team also asked the court to pursue other implications in the confessions which have not been investigated by the public prosecutor. The confessions include allusions to links between the defendants and members of various nationalist organisations.
