Trump administration failed to pursue suspicious death of American journalist in Istanbul

Nov 18 2020 

The Trump administration has failed to pursue an investigation into the death of Syrian-American journalist Halla Barakat who was murdered along with her mother in Istanbul in 2017, according to the Centre for Investigative Reporting.

Halla, who was 23, and her mother Orouba, 62, were found with their throats cut in their apartment in Istanbul in September 2017. Their bodies were covered in blankets and the apartment had been sprinkled with laundry detergent to delay their discovery. U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis and Rep. David Price, from North Carolina, where Halla was born, called for an investigation into whether the crime was a professional assassination.

Turkish authorities then arrested Ahmed Barakat, a distant relative, who had arrived in Istanbul six months previously and had been in the Free Syrian Army. Ahmed had confessed to the murders in front of a judge, saying Orouba owed him money. After a brief trial, he was given two life sentences and the investigation was closed. But Ahmed then went back on his confession in his next court appearance, saying that his translator had pressured him to cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for a reduced sentence.

Turkish authorities “did not respond to multiple requests for comment on the case made directly to the police and prosecutors and submitted through the Turkish Interior Ministry in Ankara and the Turkish Embassy in Washington”, according to the report on the investigation.

Meanwhile, the FBI also decided not to pursue the case. “Upon review into the deaths of Halla and Orouba Barakat, the FBI is confident that the Turkish legal system and their law enforcement conducted a thorough investigation and identified, interviewed and received a confession from the subject,” Tina Jagerson, an FBI spokesperson said. “The FBI is not in receipt of any further relevant information that would dispute the investigative findings or legal outcome. Additionally, the FBI has recently been in contact with the victim’s family and has communicated the FBI’s decision.”

The Barakat family in the United States, and particularly Suzanne Barakat, has not given up on the investigation. They believe that while Ahmed was involved in the murders, he probably did not act alone, and they doubt the motive he gave prosecutors. Suzanne urged North Carolina Representative David Price to seek answers from the government, and he was briefed by the FBI and State Department in September 2019.

Price left the meeting feeling that the case had become “a diplomatic matter” between the U.S. and Turkey. “But the diplomatic answer was not an adequate one… the diplomacy says we don’t get involved here,” Price said. He was given the impression that Turkey was happy to settle the investigation quickly, and that the U.S. had little appetite to pursue it. “It gives one reason to particularly question this kind of deference to Turkish authorities. Especially in a case that involves an American citizen,” Price said.

However, Agnes Callamard, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, told ABC News that her office had received information and was in contact with Turkish authorities about the case. Callamard previously investigated the killing of Jamal Kashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, determining that Saudi Arabia was responsible for the murder.

Callamard said that she wanted to make sure governments “do not stop at identifying the hit men, but look as well to identify those that have ordered the crime.”

She further commented that “my objective is to determine whether the investigation has met the standard it should meet under international law. Was it effective? Was it impartial? Was it independent? And importantly and most specifically, in the case of a journalist, did it consider all the possible motivations behind the killings? It is, in my view, absolutely crucial that as a society, we are prepared to do everything we can to go to the bottom of the killing of a journalist,” she said. “When we dig into such a crime, when we go beyond the surface of such a killing, what we find usually are deep-seated corruption, criminal activities within the core of the state, or injustice and the impunity that have become part of the system.”

http://ahval.co/en-100316