Turkish Justice Minister Yılmaz Tunç has said he expects the son of the president of Somalia to soon return to Turkey to stand trial for a fatal accident in which he was involved, leading to the death of a motorcycle courier, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
Yunus Emre Göçer, 38, was critically injured on November 30 when he was struck from behind on a busy highway in İstanbul by Mohamed Hassan Sheik Mohamud, a son of Somali President Hasan Sheikh Mohamud who was driving a vehicle registered to the Somali Consulate in the Fatih district. He died in a hospital on December 6.
Mohamud was taken into police custody following the accident but was released after giving a statement, which received significant backlash, following which a travel ban was imposed on him days after the collision.
However, it turned out that Mohamud had already fled Turkey on Dec. 2.
“We’ve had talks with Somali judicial authorities,” Tunç told reporters on Thursday. “It will be possible for the defendant to come to Turkey to stand trial in the coming days.”
“I have talked to the Somali justice minister, and they [are well-intentioned],” Tunç said, adding that he hoped that the trial would start soon.
Tunç’s remarks came following the first comments by the Somali president about the accident as reported by The Associated Press on Thursday.
The president said his son didn’t flee Turkey following the accident and that he has advised him to go back and present himself to court.
“It was an accident. He did not run away, and he hired a lawyer for this purpose,” the president was quoted as saying by AP. “And there was no arrest warrant. … So, he has a business and he came out of the country.”
President Mohamud said he is urging his son to go back and present himself to the court but adds that he’s an adult and will make the final decision himself.
Göçer’s wife Öznur filed a complaint on Wednesday against the police officers responsible for a report blaming her husband for the accident.
The prosecutor on duty at the time was also included in the complaint.
According to Öznur, Mohamud was able to flee Turkey because the police officers who arrived at the scene wrote a report blaming her husband for the accident.
An expert report drafted later, however, found the driver of the car to be primarily at fault, prompting the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office to issue a belated arrest warrant for him.