When One Life Isn't Enough

 I used to think that the USA had long overkill prison sentences .....

Larry Nassar - Monster 100 - 175 Year Prison Sentence

 ..... but I have since changed my mind, as 'life' should mean 'whole life,' if the death penalty is off the table.

However another country with a propensity for long prison sentences is Turkey, who make the USA look like amateurs. What can you say about a human mans life length? Well in Turkey its about 75.85 years (2020) .... so giving a prison sentence of 40yrs to life, should ensure any man, no matter what age they committed the offence, would stay in prison until they die in most cases. 

But that's not the way things are managed in the time of President (forever?) Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. No, in these troubled times, judges administer what passes for 'justice' in the pro-government courts in a far more flamboyant manner as they find everyone guilty .... Oh no, now the sentences must be seen to punish to the nth degree ... so now we get sentences like these.

 

Faruk Fatih Ozer was a 29 year old Turkish crypto-currency boss with his two siblings, but he had fled to Albania in 2021, with much of his investors assets, This was reported as being worth about $2bn (£1.6bn) in the Turkish media, but was later revised to being around 356 million Liras (£43m), after his Thodex Exchange suddenly collapsed (don't they all these days? be warned all those buying the Trumps crypto currencies). He was extradited back to Turkey in June 2023 .... and in September 2023 he was finally sentenced, having been found guilty of money-laundering, fraud and organised crime.

He of course had denied it, and made the mistake of challenging the conviction, Mr Ozer told the court he would "not have acted so amateurishly" if his intent was criminal, adding that "I am smart enough to lead any institution on Earth. That is evident in this company I established at the age of 22."

He also didn't go down alone, the very brief trial in Istanbul also found his sister Serap and brother Guven, both guilty of the same charges.

None of that lumping offences together in Turkey, the defendants were each sentenced separately for multiple crimes against a total of 2,027 victims (common practice since Turkey abolished the death penalty in 2004). Prosecutors had in fact had actually asked for Mr Ozer to be sentenced to a ridiculous  40,562 years in prison .... as it was, they got off lightly, having each been jailed for only 11,196 years, for defrauding Turkish investors of millions of dollars. Yep, that really is 11,196 years in prison .... that's got to be some kind of record.

Adnan Oktar - Christmas With Women He Called His "Kittens."

This somewhat overkill sentence, was following the example of that handed down to Adnan Oktar, a 66 year old, Turkish 'Muslim' televangelist. who had fronted his own television channel, through which he delivered religious sermons denouncing the theory of evolution, amongst many other strange subjects such as the the British deep state, but Oktar, and hundreds of his followers, were arrested in 2018. 

 

The charges included running a criminal organisation, tax offences, sexual abuse, and offences under the counter-terrorism laws, but with many lesser charges also included. Oddly, as he was arrested, Oktar told Turkish journalists that the allegations made against him were all "lies" and "a game by the British deep state", so obviously a topic he truly believed in.

But in January 2021, he was convicted of 10 separate charges, including leading a criminal gang, engaging in political and military espionage, sexual abuse of minors, rape, blackmail, and causing torment, and was given a jail sentence of just 1,075 years. However a retrial was ordered to include 215 other defendants, and in November 2022 he was re-sentenced to 8,658 years in prison. The original 'other charges' had included alleged links with President Erdogan's favourite super villain, exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen, who the Turkish government (President Erdogan), accuses of masterminding a failed military coup in 2016, which killed 251 people, and injured more than 2,000. But an upper court overturned that ruling.

In point of fact Mr Oktar was not going alone to prison, as ten of the other 215 accused, were also given terms of 8,658 years in prison by the court in Istanbul. The other convicted defendants were given shorter terms. It has to be pointed out in Mr Oktar's defence, that he is in fact an out and out nutter .... he had been arrested multiple times before 2018, and not only had spent time in prison, but also considerable periods of time in a psychiatric unit over the years. 

 

His views were something of a national joke, despite his having a few hundred followers (in that, he is not alone amongst cultists, see another dingbat cult leader, Romano Didulo 'Queen of Canada'), as he had written a book expounding his views, "the Atlas of Creation", which he self published, and which was reportedly shipped unrequested to academics and libraries in Turkey, and indeed abroad. Its main intellectual thrust was that Darwin's theory of evolution lay at the root of global terrorism.

However, despite these very long sentences, it wouldn't entirely surprise me if either one, or both of these Turkish men, were somehow back in circulation again before I leave the planet .....