ISTANBUL. – The Diyarbakir Military Court made a ruling in the case into the death of Sevag Sahin Balikci, an Istanbul Armenian who was killed, on April 24, 2011, in a military unit while serving in the Turkish army.

The court sentenced Kivanc Agaoglu—the fellow serviceman of Balikci— to 4.5 years in prison on charges of negligent manslaughter, Istanbul’s Agos Armenian bilingual weekly reports.

But considering that Agaoglu already had been in custody for some time, the court ruled that he will spend solely three years in prison. 

As Armenian News-NEWS.am informed earlier, Sevag Balikci was killed by fellow soldier Kivanc Agaoglu, but the Turkish gendarmerie had stated that the death had occurred accidentally while the soldiers were joking around. Sevag’s parents, however, assert that he was killed for being Armenian.

Agaoglu was released at the very first court hearing, and on the grounds that he had no reason to escape. But at Diyarbakir Military Court, an anonymous senior officer had stated that, after Sevag’s murder, an eyewitness soldier had told him that Kivanc Agaoglu had told Sevag: “Chubby, I will kill you!”