Ex-sergeant gets life for causing death of young conscript

A MAN has been sentenced by a Turkish court to life imprisonment without parole over the death of a conscript in North Cyprus in 2011.

A panel of judges at a criminal court in Ankara handed down the sentence to Fırat Keser, one of six defendants in the case regarding Private Uğur Kantar’s death.

He was found guilty of “causing death by torture” while Pte Kantar was being given weeklong “disciplinary action”.

When the court president asked Keser for any last words, he said that he was “not guilty” and requested to be released.

The court ordered that the public case against defendants Süleyman Özdoğan, Özkan Belmen and Ahmet Yurdusevdi for the “failure to report a crime” be dropped due to the statute of limitations and also ruled that “there is no need to impose a conviction” regarding the military personnel defendant Ayhan Şentürk, who had previously received a punishment.

The court decided to separate the case against “fugitive suspect” Ayhan Arslan from the others.

Sgt Keser had kept Pte Kantar handcuffed to a chair under the sun from July 16 to July 25, 2011, and repeatedly “kicked, slapped and punched” him. Pte Kantar became ill as a result of the “torture” and died on October

12, 2011, at GATA (Gülhane Military Medical Academy) in Ankara.

A Girne military court had initially sentenced Arslan and Keser to life imprisonment on charges of “causing death by torture” but the sentence was later quashed by the Supreme Court.

The case file was then transferred to the Ankara First Assize Court after military courts were closed following the coup attempt in Turkey on July 15, 2016.