Prosecutor seeks up to 25 years of jail term in bootleg alcohol case

ISTANBUL

A prosecutor demanded up to 25 years in jail for a man who sold methyl alcohol that led to the death of a 36-year-old lawyer in Istanbul’s Kartal district last year.

The prosecutor demanded the jail sentence on charges of “voluntary manslaughter with probable intent.”
Lawyer Hakkı Oğuzhan Şahinoğlu fell ill and was hospitalized on Oct. 7 last year and died five days later after allegedly drinking a liquor containing methyl alcohol he had bought from Güngör Güler, owner of a liquor store.
Güler admitted he had been selling alcohol and that he did this within legal permissions but denied accusations that he was involved in the lawyer’s death.

The indictment states that Şahinoğlu requested ethyl alcohol from Güler’s workplace to make whiskey last year, however, Güler gave him methyl alcohol instead.

The prosecutor also demanded acquittal for the two defendants who were not arrested in the case.
The astronomical rise in the prices of alcoholic beverages in Turkey has encouraged fraudsters and has led people to indeterminate liquids produced in illegal laboratories.

Methyl alcohol, which is highly fatal if consumed, is being sold in these illegal laboratories in the name of ethyl alcohol, which is required to make alcoholic beverages.