Japanese national accused of killing and eating kittens in İstanbul to be deported

A JAPANESE national, identified by the initials DM, is set to be deported after police in İstanbul fined him for killing and eating kittens.

The man has been a resident of Küçükçekmece district for three years and when “street kittens” began to disappear, another resident in the neighbourhood who saw him carrying five kittens in a bucket to his home, alerted the police.

The police detained DM for questioning, he went on to admit to strangling and eating the kittens. He was issued a fine of 10,375TL and was transferred to a centre responsible for deporting foreigners.

Yasin Öztürk, a shopkeeper in the neighbourhood who was caring for the kittens killed by the suspect, said he never even suspected that the man would do such a thing. “We [residents] were taking care of the mother of the kittens before she gave birth two months ago. They disappeared one morning and we later heard that this man put them in a bucket and took them home. I could not believe a person could do such a horrible thing,” he told Demirören News Agency (DHA) on Tuesday.

Under current laws, any act of torture or killing of a stray animal is punishable under “damage to commodities”.

Parliament is currently working on a draft law that calls for imprisonment of people convicted of animal cruelty, a law that also seeks to improve animal rights. It is expected to deter acts of violence toward animals, like the incident in which seven dogs and seven cats died in the southwestern province last week, reportedly after consuming chicken laced with poison.