Thursday, December 17, 2009

Father found guilty of honour killing of daughter, 15, after she fell in love with man from different branch of Islam

A father was today jailed for 22 years for the honour killing of his teenage daughter.

Mehmet Goren murdered 15-year-old Tulay for her doomed 'Romeo and Juliet' romance with Halil Una, an older man from a different branch of Islam.

After the teenager lost her virginity to her lover she was viewed as a 'valueless commodity' by her father - and had to be killed to restore the family's reputation.

Mr Unal was a Turkish Sunni Muslim but the Gorens were from the Alevi branch of the faith and an Alevi-Sunni relationship 'would not have been tolerated', the Old Bailey heard.

Sentencing, Mr Justice Bean, said Goren's attempts to appear a 'thoroughly modern and enlightened family man' failed to deceive the jury.

'The reality is that your enigmatic smile conceals a violent and dominating personality,' he told the killer, who showed not a flicker of emotion.

'Your wife Hanim has finally had the courage to break free of the domination and reveal what she knew of what you did in January 1999.'

He said Goren planned the murder of his daughter with 'considerable care', even forcing her to write a letter relating a false account of what had happened to her to try to throw police off the scent.

Goren disposed of the schoolgirl's body 'with such ingenuity that it has never been found', he added.

'You did all this simply because you regarded it as unacceptable that she, rather than you, should choose the man she wanted to marry.

'The term "honour killing" is a convenient shorthand, but it is a grotesque distortion of language.
'There is nothing honourable about such a hideous practice or the people who carry it out.'


The judge made clear Goren would not be eligible for parole until 2030, when he will be nearly 70.

The Old Bailey had heard how Tulay - who had told a friend she might be pregnant - vanished from the family home in north London in January 1999.

The day before she disappeared, her mother Hanim returned home to find her daughter trussed up so tightly her hands and feet had turned purple and black.

In harrowing evidence, Mrs Goren told the court how she had tried to untie Tulay but her daughter told her 'Mum don't untie me, I want to die.'

The case ground to a halt for several moments after the anguished mother, 45, screamed across the court at her husband.

'Look at my face. Tell me what you did to Tulay,' she demanded, adding in Turkish: 'Tell me where her bones are.'

Jurors also heard how Goren, 49, ordered his eight-year-old son Tuncay to kiss Tulay goodbye as he would never see his sister again.

The day afterwards she vanished. Police believe she was drugged, tortured and stabbed to death by her father who then temporarily hid her body in the back garden.

The jury cleared Goren's two brothers Ali, 56, and Cuma, 43, of Tulay's murder. All three men were also found not guilty of conspiring to murder Tulay's boyfriend.

Thirteen days after Tulay's murder, Goren attacked Mr Unal - who reported Tulay missing - with an axe in a pub car park in Leytonstone.

He recovered from his injuries and Goren - who was described as a 'psychotic bully' - was jailed for GBH.

Evidence: Police believe this piece of washing line was used during the disposal of Tulay's body
It emerged that Goren had once tried to gas his whole family to death and on another occasion to inject his wife with rat poison.

The attack and Mr Unal and Tulay's disappearance were treated separately and it was two months before detectives began to suspect Tulay had been murdered.

Police submitted a file to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in 2000 but on advice from a senior prosecution barrister no one was charged over her death.

Goren, of Woodford Green, had been arrested shortly after his daughter's disappearance but was arrested again in 2008, along with his two brothers, after a review.
All three were charged and brought to trial.

But it was the bravery of Mrs Goren, who had endured 30 years of torment at the hands of her husband, which eventually led to his conviction.

Breaking the conspiracy of silence which has often thwarted honour cases, she took the stand to give damning evidence.

Police and lawyers praised both her and Tulay's sister Nuray and lover Halil Unal for their courage in speaking out.

Scotland Yard and the CPS today admitted past gaps in their knowledge and understanding of domestic violence in British Muslim families.

But a senior detective today pledged: 'No victim will be turned away on the basis that honour-based violence is nothing to do with the police.'

Police had become involved in the weeks leading up to the murder when Mehmet beat up Mr Unal, then complained about the relationship to officers and demanded his daughter take a virginity test.

Tulay ran away and told them he had beat her, and that she would rather be taken into care than return home, before being persuaded to go back by her mother.

After the case, Nuray Guler, Tulay's older sister, called on her father to tell the family where she was buried.

She said: 'For my father, I have only one request. I ask that he finally discloses the whereabouts of my sister.

'I wake up at night wondering where Tulay may be. In quiet moments during the day I ask myself if she suffered or knew what was in store for her.

'I ask that he put an end to the nightmares that haunt us and allow us to retrieve Tulay in order that she may rest in peace alongside her sister Hatice.'

Hatice died in a car crash seven years after her sister went missing.Read more:

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