More than 16 years in prison for a former AKP mayor for the death of 26 people in the 2023 earthquake in Türkiye

MADRID Dec. 6 (EUROPA PRESS) –

Seven people, including the former mayor of Nurdagi, in southeastern Turkey, have been sentenced to more than seven years in prison for the death of 26 people when a building in the town collapsed during the earthquake that hit the border between Turkey and Turkey in 2023. country and Syria.

A court this Thursday sentenced five people, including the real estate developer and former councilor of this municipality in the Turkish province of Gaziantep, Okkes Kavak, to a sentence of 16 years and three months in prison for “causing the death or injury of more of a person through conscious negligence” when a building he had financed collapsed, reports the Turkish newspaper ‘Milli Gazete’.

This mayor of the ruling AKP party is also accused of using falsified documents to obtain a construction permit. Kavak is in preventive detention and is being prosecuted for the collapse of another block in which 36 people died.

Likewise, the court has sentenced two other people to seven years and six months in prison for the same case.

Nurdagi is one of the Turkish towns that was most damaged due to the 7.8 magnitude earthquake on the Richter scale that devastated the south of the country in February 2023, causing the death of more than 53,000 people in Turkey and more than 6,000 in neighboring Syria.