Trial halted after Irish consul takes court photos
Recep Cetin, aged 22, and his father Erup Cetin face trial at the Fifth High Criminal Court in Izmir, Turkey, for the murder of friends Marian Graham and Kathy Dinsmore, both 53.
Families of the victims did not attend. However, the Irish Government was represented by Honorary Consul Bulent Akgerman.
The court considered the reliability of a secret witness. This person claimed to have heard screaming and seen both accused covered in blood in the woods where the bodies of the two women were found.
Erup Cetin denied the secret witness was present at the scene of the killings.
He said: “I have nothing to do with the murders. If I had anything to do with it I would have fled.”
Referring to the first stage of the hearing, when only his son Recep was on trial, Erup Cetin said: “I originally came here to attend my son’s hearing and the police arrested me. I reject all the charges against me.”
Recep Cetin also said he did not believe the secret witness was present at the scene. “I don’t defend my father and I am not trying to take the blame on myself,” he said.
“This is my life, my responsibility. It has been more than one year since the incident, but I am still in shock.
“I respect the court and the justice. I am ready to accept my sentencing — may God forgive me.”
In the second half of the hearing, Honorary Consul Bulent Akgerman was found taking photos with his mobile phone. Judges ordered a lockdown of the courtroom. Mr Akgerman apologised to the court and claimed he did not know it was forbidden to take photos during the hearing.
His mobile phone was confiscated and photos of the trial were deleted.
Once the case resumed, judges rejected the defendants’ appeal for a new survey of the crime scene.
Judges also rejected the defence request for a second bone marrow test to confirm Recep Cetin’s age. A previous DNA test showed that Recep Cetin is 22, rather than a teenager, as he had claimed.
A judge ordered that the mobile phone allegedly used by the secret witness at the scene of the killing be analysed to show its location at the time.
The bodies of the two Irish women were discovered in Kusadasi, Turkey, in woodland near their holiday resort.
Victim Ms Graham and her daughter Shannon regularly spent their summers in the Turkish resort and travelled back to Ireland during the winter months.
Shannon met Recep Cetin on one of these trips and started a relationship with him. Locals said the pair had been seeing each other for two-and-a-half years.
In Aug 2011 neighbours reported that Cetin was pressurising Shannon to marry him, with shouting sometimes heard late into the night.
The case was adjourned until May 15.
