One ruling that doesn't pass the sniff test

Hisham Talaat Moustafa is a very big and very rich fish in Egypt, and he discovered that what happens in Dubai doesn't stay there. In an impressive example of police work, the Dubai police provided extensive evidence to establish the responsibility of the tycoon for the 2008 murder of his former girlfriend, the pop singer Suzanne Tamim. The actual killing was done by a retired Egyptian cop who left enough physical evidence to make for an open and shut case. Moustafa's role in hiring the killer was captured on tapped phone conversations. Both men were convicted of murder and sentenced to hang. The rich and powerful in Egypt seldom answer for their misbehavior, not to mention dance for their crimes, so the trial, which captivated Egyptians, was an unexpected vindication of justice.

Yesterday, the Court of Cassation ordered a new trial. Let's just say the odor is not pleasant, especially given what seems to have been compelling and extensive evidence presented during the trial. Watch this story.

Macabre Excavations: Those missing Kurdish men...

More on the acid wells were Turkish death squads dumped the victims during what the Turkish military described as "the terror war." "Kurdish researchers argue that the number of unresolved murders in Turkey exceeds 20,000."

Honor killings--excused murder in my book--in Turkey

Honor killings are hardly unique to Turkey, but also occur with distressing regularity in Pakistan, Jordan, Egypt, Algeria and a variety of other societies, including parts of Europe and Latin America where "protecting family honor" is used to justify the murder of women who may have done little more than to behave imprudently.

In a case that I know of in Egypt, a young women who worked as a maid for a Cairo family was given leave to visit her family during an 'eid. She took the wrong train from Cairo and ended up in a town where the next train was not until morning. A sympathetic women put her up over night, but her brothers, sure that "something" must have happened, were intent on killing (the method in this case: to be tied in a sack weighted with rocks and thrown in the Nile). Incidentally, the woman was illiterate and could not read the signs at the train station. As it happened, she was saved through the intervention of her Egyptian employers, but perhaps she only earned a reprieve.

In her recent posts on Turkey, Jenny White has periodically addressed honor killings there. As she notes about a recent case in which a woman was horribly mutilated, as well as stabbed, but still survived, what is most appalling is the role of the police. After the woman fled the threats of her husband, the police foricibly returned her to her spouse, who claimed the woman was fabricating.

New York Times features an interview with İzhak Alaton

Izhak Alaton, Turkish entrepreneur, delivered the Campagna-Kerven Lecture at Boston University in 2001. He spoke candidly about the political reform, corruption and change in Turkey. Izhak-bey came into the limelight when the longtime partner and friend Uzeyir Garih was murdered visiting a cemetary in Istanbul in 2001. At the time, the incident seems to be isolated and strange, but in recent months it has become clear that there was probably a deep conspiracy.

If you are going to be in Boston in April, don't forget the annual lecture will be April 15 with Mustafa Akyol, who may be able to shed light on these matters, as well as the structural underpinnings of violence. In one of recent posts he discusses the phenomenon of anti-Semitism in Kemalist Turkey, which is also the subject of a recent post in Kamil Pasha. In his C-K lecture, he will examine the "deep-state" in Turkey and related themes.