No Turkish Connection for the Fuat Deniz Murder

I’ve been reporting since early in December on the murder of Fuat Deniz, an Assyrian Christian university professor in Sweden. See the links at the bottom of this post for previous articles on this topic.

Since the first days of the story, it seemed likely that there was a political motive for the murder, based on Prof. Deniz’ area of research — the Ottoman genocide against Assyrian Christians — and the fact that he and some of his Assyrian colleagues had been threatened.

But now the Swedish police have arrested a suspect, and politics was apparently not involved. Instead it was, like so many murders, a family quarrel:

Murder suspect ‘was related’ to lecturer

Police in Örebro have confirmed that university lecturer Fuat Deniz was related to a 42-year-old man being held in connection with his murder.

Police said that an old feud between the two family members constituted the most likely motive for the killing.

“The political motive is no longer valid,” police spokesman Torbjörn Carlson told SVT.

The suspect was questioned by police on Thursday evening and the investigation is said by Carlson to be progressing well.

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Prosecutors have applied for the suspect to be remanded in custody, with a hearing scheduled for 1pm on Friday.

Deniz, 40, was stabbed in Örebro University’s sports complex on December 11th last year. He died of his injuries two days later. Police in Örebro have questioned hundreds of people in a wide-ranging investigation into the murder.

There are still peculiarities in this case — such as the fact that Prof. Deniz was “stabbed” in the neck, in classical jihad fashion, as well as the earlier threats against Assyrian academics — but it now seems unlikely that they will ever be fully explained.


Previous Posts about Fuat Deniz:

2007		Dec		15		The Long Arm of the Assyrian Genocide
				16		Silencing Any Discussion of the Assyrian Genocide
				18		Remembering Fuat Deniz
				19		A Political Murder? Unlikely, Says Swedish Expert
				22		Soft-Pedaling the Murder of Fuat Deniz
				25		The Swedish Keystone Cops
				30		Update on the Fuat Deniz Case
2008		Jan		3		Bureaucratic Torpor in Swedish Law Enforcement
				12		Sweden’s Feds Take up the Fuat Deniz Case
				16		The Swedish Police Have “A Person of Interest”

Hat tip: TB.