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| DHA photo |
A man living in the southeastern province of Diyarbakır, Turkey, has been sentenced to 15 months in prison for allegedly throwing a plastic bottle at his son along with punching his daughter, Doğan News Agency has reported.
A lawsuit was filed last September against İbrahim Kaçan, 40, with a demand for up to three years in jail on charges of “actual bodily harm” after he allegedly threw a plastic bottle at his 18-year-old son Umut Kaçan and punched his daughter, identified only as Ç.K. The two children later withdrew their complaint but the court did not reduce the sentence.
However, the Diyarbakır 4th Penal Court of First Instance initially sentenced Kaçan to six months in prison on charges of “actual bodily harm” and then increased the sentence to nine months, citing that the crime was committed by “an offensive weapon.” Kaçan also received another six months in jail on the same charges for allegedly punching his daughter.
Speaking to reporters, the 18-year-old said he did not intentionally file a complaint against his father.
“I do not want my father to be sentenced. He did not throw the bottle at me but threw it next to me. It hit me as I moved at that moment,” Umut Kaçan said.
The father also claimed that he did not throw the bottle at his son, adding that the court deemed the bottle as “an offensive weapon.”
“I got angry when he talked a bit disrespectfully. I was eating and the water I was drinking was deemed a weapon because it had ice. They sentenced me to nine months. I did not throw the bottle at my son but threw it next to him. It did not hit him,” Kaçan said.
Meanwhile, İbrahim Kaçan’s lawyer said they had appealed the court decision, defining it as an illegitimate intervention in his client’s family relationship.
In a similar case, a prosecutor in the western province of Denizli had sought imprisonment of between two and five years for a woman, Şenay Güzel, who threw a slipper at her 38-year-old son Halil Güzel on the grounds that the slippers could be deemed an offensive weapon.
In early December, however, a local court acquitted Güzel on the charges at the first hearing of the case after her son withdrew the complaint.
