Murderers of Christians face life sentence in Turkey

PanARMENIAN.Net - Five men are to go on trial in eastern Turkey, accused of killing three Christians earlier this year.



The Christians, who included a pastor and a German missionary, were stabbed repeatedly and had their throats cut.



The suspects, aged 19 and 20, were detained at the scene of the crime, a Protestant publishing house in Malatya. The murders prompted three Christian families to leave the town. Germany has accused Turkey of "unacceptable intolerance" towards non-Muslims.



Turkey is a candidate for EU membership. The bloc has asked Ankara to protect the human rights of the country's ethnic and religious minorities, as a precondition for membership.



The murder of the Christians in the eastern town of Malatya came months after the killing of the ethnic Armenian journalist, Hrant Dink, and a year after the killing of a Catholic priest in northern Turkey.



In all cases, the alleged killers were nationalist-minded young men or even teenagers.



Turkish nationalists often view missionaries as a threat, especially in remote places like Malatya, where the defendants reportedly told police they were acting to foil a plot to undermine Islam and divide Turkey.



The killings were condemned by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.



One of the victims was a local pastor, another a German missionary who had lived in Turkey with his family for several years.



The five suspects face three life sentences each, while two others are charged with membership of a terrorist organization.



A lawyer acting for the victims' families says he is concerned by the tone of the indictment against the accused. More than half the 31 files in the indictment focus on the missionary work of the men murdered. They include contact details of people they approached. The lawyer believes that will help those accused plead provocation.



The murder prompted three Christian families to leave Malatya, shrinking the town's Protestant community to about two dozen people. There are only around 100,000 Christians left in Turkey, less than 1% of the population, BBC reports.