Human rights court: Turkey didn’t co-operate on murder case

NICOSIA, Cyprus – Europe’s top human rights court has ordered Turkey to pay a fine to the relatives of a murdered Turkish Cypriot family after ruling it had failed to co-operate with neighbouring Cyprus in investigating the 14-year-old crime.

The European Court of Human Rights said Tuesday that Turkey hadn’t made “the minimum effort required” to live up to its obligation to work with Cyprus in getting to the bottom of the 2005 killing of a Turkish Cypriot man, his wife and daughter.

The three were found shot dead on a highway in the internationally recognized, southern part of ethnically divided Cyprus.

The court found that Turkey failed to even respond to the Cypriot government’s extradition requests for the murder suspects, who had crossed into the island’s breakaway Turkish Cypriot north.