Constitutional Court: Festus Okey’s right to life violated

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The Constitutional Court has handed down its detailed ruling regarding the death of Festus Okey, a citizen of Nigeria who was shot to death at the Beyoğlu Security Branch in İstanbul 14 years ago.

In its detailed ruling pronounced today (March 10), the Court has concluded that Okey's right to life, as guaranteed by Article 17 of the Constitution, was violated on procedural and material grounds.

Tochukwu Gamaliah Ögu, the sibling of Festus Okey, will be paid the court expenses and 80 thousand lira in non-pecuniary damages.

In his dissenting opinion against the supreme court, which has argued that the prohibition of discrimination was not violated, Engin Yıldırım, a member of the Constitutional Court, has found it wrong that the supreme court has announced a judgement about this issue while the local court currently hearing the case has not yet given a judgement.

'Unwillingness to get justice'

The detailed ruling of the Constitutional Court has referred to the fact that the shirt Okey was wearing at the time of the incident was lost and the shooting distance could not be determined for this reason, no body mark examination was or could be conducted on the weapon and the gunshot residue examination was done on the suspect's hands too late.

Accordingly, the supreme court has indicated that the abovementioned deficiencies led to a nonrecoverable situation.

In their application to the Constitutional Court, the family and their attorneys indicated that evidence was destroyed.

The Court has commented on these allegations as follows:

"Even though no hardships were encountered in obtaining or keeping the evidence, reasonable steps were not taken, which resulted in a failure to obtain a piece of evidence that might have been obtained.

"The extreme heedlessness and unwillingness in the processes of investigation or prosecution, the undue importance attached to the statements of the suspects, who are public officers, in recognizing the course of the incident, the reluctance to inquire some issues that would prove vital in reaching a conclusion might themselves, depending on the conditions of the incident, pose a problem in terms of the independence of the investigation and might give the impression that there is an unwillingness to get justice."

Dissenting opinion on discrimination allegation

The police officer who killed Okey (C.Y.) previously defended himself by saying that "based on his professional experience thus far acquired from previous incidents, he thought that black skinned people in Beyoğlu, with its cosmopolitan structure, and the ones coming there from eastern Turkey should be paid considerable attention in terms of drug-related crimes."

The Constitutional Court has referred to the role of discrimination in the killing of Festus Okey; however, it has found the application about the violation of prohibition of discrimination "inadmissible."

Expressing a dissenting opinion as to this decision, judge Engin Yıldırım, a member of the Constitutional Court, has noted that the ruling to be handed down by the local court should have been awaited.

Yıldırım has said that the Constitutional Court's examination of this allegation "would not be compatible with the principle of secondariness of the individual application considering that the allegation of a deliberate violation of right to life due to discrimination based on skin color has not yet been assessed by the prosecution and no final rulings have been announced." 

(AS/SD)