7 people to life in prison

Turkey’s state-run news agency says a court has sentenced seven people to life in prison for an attack on an engagement ceremony last year that killed 44 people. Anatolia news agency says the court in central Turkey also sentenced another defendant to a 15-year prison term Monday for his involvement in the attack.

In the attack May 4, masked gunmen stormed the ceremony in the village of Bilge, in Turkey’s mostly Kurdish southeast, killing the betrothed couple, the imam presiding over the ceremony and many of the guests. The dead included six children and three pregnant women.

Authorities at the time blamed the attack on a family feud although court officials have said the motive for the attack could not be established.

A Turkish court on Monday sentenced six people to life imprisonment for an attack that killed 44 at an engagement party in southeast Turkey last year, local media reported.

A high criminal court in the central Corum Province also gave an underage defendant 15 years in prison for each of the 44 victims, making it a 660-year imprisonment, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported.

Another defendant was sentenced to 15 years in prison for keeping weapons at his house, while one was sentenced to six months in prison for opening fire to the air, said the agency.

Last May, masked gunmen armed with assault rifles attacked an engagement party in the Bilge village of the Mardin Province, killing 44 people, including six children and 16 women, and wounding three others.

Trial of the 13 suspects in the case started in September 2009, among whom four were acquitted on Monday.

The massacre was at that time blamed on the division of water resources and farm areas in the village, while some claimed that it resulted from family feud.

The motive of the case was not provided in the indictment, according to the agency.

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Category: National