Uncle ‘ordered teenager’s murder’
London, 17 November 2009: A man accused of murdering his daughter in a so-called “honour killing” has told a court his brother told him to make her and her boyfriend “disappear”.
Mehmet Goren was giving evidence at the Old Bailey where he and his brothers are accused of murdering 
.
The 15-year-old went missing from Woodford Green, north London, in 1999 and her body has never been found.
He told the court his brother Ali told him to kill her, adding: “I would need to be a sadist to harm my own child.”
‘A maniac’
Prosecutors say the schoolgirl was murdered for falling in love with the wrong man.
Jurors have heard that she ran away to stay with her boyfriend, Halil Unal, in December 1998 and that it was later agreed that she should marry him at a register office, but the ceremony could not go ahead because of her age.
Mr Goren, who was speaking through a Turkish interpreter, said his older brother Ali told him: “It is best you make them disappear.”
He added: “He was telling me to kill them.
“I said, ‘Are you a maniac?’ I thought perhaps there was some sense in relation to Halil because Halil had used Tulay.”
He said Ali was someone with “no love, no affection” for his own children or those of his brothers.
Mr Goren said there had been a previous incident when Ali had called Tulay and told her: “You are a prostitute.”
Faith ‘wasn’t discussed’
He was asked by his barrister Michael Turner QC if he had had “any objection to the union” between his daughter and her boyfriend on the basis that he was a Sunni Muslim while the Gorens were of the Alevi branch of the faith.
“No,” he said. “It wasn’t even discussed.”
He also told the court his wife Hanim had tied their daughter up after he had brought her back from Mr Unal’s house the day before she disappeared, fearing she would run away again.
Mehmet Goren told the court: “She brought up four children.
“I have not seen a day when that woman treated the children kindly.”
Mrs Goren has given evidence for the prosecution in the case.
Mr Goren also told the court on the day Tulay disappeared she said she would not see Mr Unal again and was at home when he left to go to a betting shop.
Mr Goren, 49, of Woodford Green, north London, together with his brothers Cuma Goren, 42, of Walthamstow, east London, and Ali Goren, 56, also of Walthamstow, deny murdering Tulay.
They also deny conspiracy to murder Mr Unal between May 1998 and February 1999.
The trial continues.
Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk
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