Mother finds killed son’s body after three failed DNA tests in Gaziantep

İdris Emen - GAZİANTEP

A mother has finally found the dead body of her son who was killed in a jihadist attack almost three months ago after three failed DNA tests were presented to her in the southeastern province of Gaziantep. 

Emine Ayhan lost three children in an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) attack in Gaziantep on Aug. 20, which claimed the lives of a total of 57 people, most of whom were children. 

Ayhan found the dead bodies of two of her children after the suicide attack, but was unable to find her 9-year-old child, Ramazan Ayhan.

A DNA test and a dead body were presented to the mother and officials assured her that the body belonged to Ramazan Ayhan, according to a DNA test that was “99.99 percent certain.” 

However, she rejected the test and said the body did not belong to her son. Two more DNA tests were later conducted and those also identified the body as Ramazan Ayhan’s. 

“This body doesn’t belong to Ramazan. My son has scars from surgery on his hands and feet. I would have recognized him if he were my child,” she told authorities insistently, which prompted authorities to send a team from Ankara to Gaziantep for an additional examination. 

The team presented photos from the scene of the explosion, which showed the bodies of the children who died in the attack, to Emine Ayhan and her family. Ayhan and her brother Abdulcelil Ayhan identified a photo that belonged to Ramazan Ayhan. 

The prosecutor’s office ordered that a graveyard, where an unidentified child was buried in, be opened in the Yeşilköy Cemetery. Emine Ayhan confirmed the body belonged to her child after seeing the surgery scars. 
“DNA samples were again sent to the forensic medicine institute 80 days after the attack with DNA samples removed from the mother and the father,” Abdulcelil Ayhan told daily Hürriyet. 

Meanwhile, the dead body mistaken for Ramazan Ayhan still remains unknown. 

“All of the families took their remains. The body might belong to a Syrian child from the neighborhood,” Abdulcelil Ayhan added.