Father on trial in 1999 honor killing

LONDON, Oct. 8 (UPI) -- A Turkish immigrant killed his 15-year-old daughter in 1999 because she was having an affair with an older man, a British prosecutor said Thursday.

Mehmet Goren's wife remained silent for years because she feared her husband, Jonathan Laidlaw, the prosecuting lawyer told a jury in London's Old Bailey. Mehmet Goren, 49, and his brothers, Ali, 55, and Cuma, 42, deny killing Tulay Goren, The Daily Mail reported.

Her father was angry because her boyfriend, Halil Unal, 31 at the time, was a Sunni while the Gorens were Turkish Kurds from the Alevi branch of Islam, Laidlaw said.

"Tulay's father was outraged and was filled with a sense that his reputation and that of his family had been destroyed," Laidlaw said.

Mehmet Goren's wife, Hanim, recently told police her husband sent her and her three other children to stay with relatives after he brought Tulay home. She never saw her daughter again but returned to find the garden had been dug up.

Tulay Goren's body has never been found. Mehmet Goren was convicted in 2000 of assaulting Unal with an ax, an attack he survived.