Turkey: Daesh member gets life for killing journalist
Turkish court hands out 2 life sentences for killing of Syrian journalist in Gaziantep
FILE PHOTO
By Adsız Gunebakan
GAZIANTEP, Turkey
A Turkish court on Friday handed two life sentences to a Daesh member convicted of killing Syrian activist and journalist Naji al-Jerf.
A court in the southeastern Gaziantep province gave Yusuf Hamed Eshverihi one life sentence for attempting to overthrow the constitutional order and another for murder.
Three other suspects -- Farag Al-Hussein, Ali Cerkez and Reyad Matar -- were acquitted for lack of evidence.
Thirty-seven-year-old Jerf was shot dead on Dec. 27, 2015 in Gaziantep, which is home to several thousand Syrian refugees.
Jeff had been vocal about the atrocities of the Assad regime, which made him a target and forced him to flee to Turkey. Once in Turkey, he made two anti-Daesh films.
Just before his death, he was about to leave Turkey for France with his family, where he had been granted asylum.
Turkey now hosts some 3 million Syrian refugees, more than any other country in the world. The country has spent around $25 billion in helping and sheltering refugees since the beginning of the Syrian civil war.
Syria has been locked in a devastating civil war since early 2011, when the Bashar al-Assad regime cracked down on pro-democracy protests -- which erupted as part of the Arab Spring uprisings -- with unexpected ferocity, Since then, hundreds of thousands of people are believed to have been killed and millions more displaced by the conflict.
