Honour Killing

Teenager killed his sister for living a Western life

From Roger Boyes in Berlin

AYHAN SURUCU was so angry when his sister started to wear make-up and date German men that he put a gun to her head at a bus stop and killed her.

The 18-year-old Turk fired three bullets into her brain and calmly walked away.

Boys at a nearby school, attended mainly by the children of immigrant Muslim families, cheered and applauded when news of the murder reached them.

The so-called "honour killing" of Hatun Surucu, 23, last year shocked Germany and sparked intense debate about a conservative Muslim immigrant community at odds with a secular society.

That anger was rekindled yesterday when Surucu, a minor when the murder took place, was sentenced to nine years and three months by a Berlin court, considered lenient by many Germans.

His brothers, Alpaslan, 25, and Mutlu, 26, were acquitted because of lack of evidence, at which friends and family in the courtroom cheered. The prosecution had sought life sentences for their part in the murder of their sister.

The state prosecutor had demanded that all three brothers be convicted. Ayhan, the youngest, had confessed to pulling the trigger but according to the prosecutor the two others had stood guard and obtained the murder weapon. They denied any involvement.

The evidence of a crown witness, a Turkish girl who wore a bullet-proof vest when she stood in the witness stand, was deemed yesterday to be too flimsy for a conviction. Only Ayhan, 19, was jailed after admitting that he wanted to "wipe the stain from our family".

There are 40 "honour killings" a year in Germany and most of them result from the failure of an arranged marriage, which are illegal in the country.

(Boyes, "London Times Online," 4/14/06).