KEMAL ATATURK WEPT: Turkey Acquits 2 Men in Berlin ‘Honor Killing’ of Their Sister.

The sister, Hatun Surucu, 23, was killed at a Berlin bus stop 12 years ago when her youngest brother fired three bullets into her head. The brothers said the family’s honor had been offended because she divorced the man her family had forced her to marry at age 16, and then began dating and refused to wear a head scarf.

Though her family is ethnically Kurdish, and originally from Turkey, Ms. Surucu had been born and raised in Germany. Her murder, after a series of similar so-called honor killings of Muslim women in Germany, sent shock waves through the country.
…
Ms. Surucu’s youngest brother, Ayhan, admitted that he had killed her and he was jailed for nine years in a German prison.

But his brothers — Mutlu, now 38, and Alparslan, now 36 — have been acquitted twice of helping him: first in Germany in 2006, and again on Tuesday when a separate trial in Istanbul found them not guilty because of a lack of evidence.

Mutlu Surucu had previously spoken approvingly of his sister’s death. But a crucial prosecution witness who might have been able to offer evidence that the brothers had cooperated in the killing — Ayhan Surucu’s ex-girlfriend — did not appear to testify in the Istanbul trial, according to Leyla Suren, a lawyer with the Initiative Against Femicide, a Turkish rights-advocacy group, who attended the hearing.

The potential witness, known in court records only as Melek A, could not be found at her last known address in Germany, and no other witnesses were able to provide clear evidence to buttress the prosecution’s case. The Initiative Against Femicide was also denied the right to testify, Ms. Suren said.

It certainly looks like the fix was in at the Turkish court, but the real shocker is that the killer was made to serve only nine years by German authorities.