By Jean Christou
TWO YOUTHS arrested in connection with the murder of Turkish Cypriot journalist Sertac Gorguner have told a ‘court’ in the occupied areas they killed him because he was gay, papers in the north reported yesterday.
Kibris, the newspaper that 35-year-old Gorguner was working for, said the two suspects arrested in connection with his death had been remanded for three days on Monday.
The two youths, Mustafa Yildizgoban and Aziz Oshuy, aged 15 and 17, laughed in court and said they had killed the journalist “because of his sexual preferences”, Kibrissaid.
Gorguner, who was also the correspondent in the north for the French news agency, Agence France Presse (AFP), was found dead on Sunday just outside the occupied village of Ayia Irini some 40 kilometres west of Nicosia.
According to Kibris, an autopsy found that Gorguner was strangled with his own belt, after which the killers crushed his skull.
His body was found in woods some 10 kilometres from his car. The vehicle’s windows were broken when the car was found. It appeared as if it had been crashed.
Gorguner had been on his way home from work at Kibrisat around 10.30pm.
The two suspects were arrested eight hours after the killing and have allegedly confessed to the murder.
The apparently senseless killing has caused outrage in the north. Avrupanewspaper said it had received dozens of angry phone calls over the suspects’ behaviour in court.
Avrupa
also said that Gorguner’s mother, Sevil Alpay, said that last week some persons had visited her house and looked for her son, but left when they didn’t find him.
“I didn’t know these persons, but on their way out they said ‘we only came to warn him’,” she told the newspaper.
Gorguner was British educated as a chemical engineer.
Mainland Turkish newspaper Sabah– for whom he also worked — said he had been working on a story related to the murder of Greek Cypriot enclaved man Stelios Charpas, 69, whose charred remains were found in his burned out car outside the village of Rizokarpasso two weeks ago. Charpas had been shot twice through the head, an autopsy revealed.
