Prosecutors twice demanded arrest warrant, rejected by court panel

The panel of judges refused twice in two years to incarcerate the defendants in the child marriage case that shook Turkey despite persistent demands of the persecution, Independent Turkish reported.

Opposition in Turkey lambasted the ministry of justice for its failure to jail the perpetrators of the pedophile case revealed by journalist Timur Soykan from Birgun newspaper last week, in which prosecutors in Istanbul filed a lawsuit against Yusuf Ziya Gumusel, a leader of the influential İsmailaga cult in Turkey who enabled neighbour Kadir Istekli, a preacher from the same cult to rape and abuse her daughter H.K.G since she was six years old under the disguise of “marriage.”

The first hearing in the case will be on May 22, 2023 but Independent revealed that the prosecutors asked for the arrest of both the father Yusuf Ziya Gumusel and Kadir Istekli but their demands were turned down by the court during the investigation that began in November 2020.

The judges decided to let the defendants go under judicial control, even after an objection by the prosecutor Ercan Ates.

Independent Turkish quoted Ates as saying to people close to him:

"This is a two-year-old file, but it has just been handed over to me. The first prosecutor, who oversaw the investigation, asked for the arrest of both Gumusel and Kadir Istekli but the request was rejected by the magistrate. He objected to the rejection decision, but that was also rejected. I expected that the high criminal court would issue an arrest warrant after accepting my indictment, but this is not how it turned out.”

After years of abuse, at the age of 14 in 2012, a doctor noticed H.K.G was violated during a medical examination and prevented the police which resulted with an investigation. But when the court requested that her bone age be determined, the cult members stepped in and tricked a hospital by testing another woman who was 21 years old, thus getting a report saying she could be married legally.

Another investigation is ongoing about the bone test scheme, now that the whole story came to light.