Court gives aggravated life sentence to man who beheaded a Syrian child in Turkey’s southeast

GAZİANTEP

A court in the southeastern province of Gaziantep has handed down an aggravated life prison sentence to a man who beheaded a 14-year-old Syrian child. Cengiz Polat, 34, cut the throat of Syrian child Ferhat Ali on March 23 while the latter was working for the former in a white appliances store in the province’s Şahinbey district, Doğan News Agency reported on Sept. 22. 

Polat killed the child in order to steal 250 Turkish Liras from him and threw his severed head into a well.
The court board asked Polat for his last defense in the final hearing of the murder trial, which was held in the Gaziantep Fifth Heavy Penal Court. Polat admitted to committing the crime, which he had denied in the first trial of the case, but said that he didn’t intend to kill the child. 

Saying that he was under the effect of drugs when he was cutting the child’s throat in the store’s depot, Polat requested a reduction in his sentence. The court rejected his request and gave him an aggravated lifetime prison sentence on charges of “killing a child who wasn’t in a position to defend himself with monstrous feelings.” 

Meanwhile, Bülent Duran, a lawyer who joined the case as a part of the Gaziantep Bar’s Human Rights Center, said that Polat threatened the court board and the lawyers in the first hearing of the trial. According to Duran, Polat said, “I will cut more throats,” in the first hearing. 

“The suspect denied the accusations against him in the first trial and said, ‘I’m not a manslayer.’ We joined the case as the Gaziantep Bar’s Human Rights Center. We asked to join due to the violation of the right to life and the court accepted it. The suspect’s testimony was in the direction of rejecting the charges in the first hearing,” Duran told Doğan News Agency, adding that the final decision was given in the second hearing. 
“He [Polat] threatened us in the first hearing. The court also wrote that in its record and filed a criminal complaint. No deduction in the sentence was given,” he said. 

Duran noted that Polat will also be tried on charges of robbery due for taking money from the child that he beheaded.