A Turkish court has sentenced four border officers to life imprisonment for the torture and death of two Syrian migrants in March 2023, according to a court ruling obtained by AFP on Friday.
Seven additional officers were convicted in May and handed sentences of up to seven and a half years for charges including intentional bodily harm and tampering with evidence.
Prosecutors revealed that the convicted officers, stationed in Hatay province near the Syrian border, detained a group of Syrian nationals, eight of whom had crossed into Turkey without legal documentation.
Two of the detainees, Abdurrezzak Kastal and Abdulsettar Elhaccar, were brutally beaten with iron rods and forced to ingest petrol, which ultimately led to their deaths. The remaining migrants were deported to Syria and hospitalized for injuries sustained.
Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, millions of Syrians have sought refuge in Turkey. In response to the mass influx, Turkish authorities constructed a border wall to limit illegal crossings.
As of June, approximately 2.7 million Syrians remain in Turkey, while around 275,000 have returned to Syria following the fall of President Bashar Al-Assad in December, according to official figures.
AFP
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