A Moroccan and two Iraqi men were sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday, June 11, for the 2016 murder of an Iraqi national in Turkey.
Rabat – A Turkish court convicted Mahmoud Khalaf Suleiman, Farouk Abdullah Hmod al-Dulaimi, and Tariq Moutil for the murder of Ahmed Mawlood Muhammad, an Iraqi business man. All three men pleaded innocent.
Muhammad died from shot wounds. His dismembered body was later found on a roadside outside of Istanbul.
The three convicted men met Muhammad when they offered to help him set up a currency exchange business in Istanbul. On July 3, 2016 they kidnapped Muhammad and his business partner, Ahmed Mohammed Saleh, in Buyukcekmece, a suburb of Istanbul.
Muhammad and Saleh were blindfolded and robbed. The suspects used the victims’ s mobile phones to demand a $10 million ransom from their families in Iraq.
The suspects shot Muhammad during the kidnapping. He later bled to death while being held captive. The 3 defendants then dismembered his body and dumped it on the side of the road in Buyukcekmece. After his death, the kidnappers continued to demand a ransom from Muhammad’s family for his release.
The suspects held Saleh for three days. He escaped from his captors by jumping out of their vehicle when it stopped at a red light.
Suleiman, al-Dulaimi, and Moutil maintained their innocence during the trial and claimed to have no involvement in the killing. The Bakirkoy 14 High Criminal Court in Istanbul found the defendants guilty. All three were sentenced to a thirty year life sentence for the kidnapping, robbery, and murder of Muhammad.
