Mattia Minguzzi update: Knife used to kill teen 'not a weapon' - but gran jailed for hitting granddaughter with a slipper
A judge has bafflingly ruled that a knife used to stab a teen to death is not an offensive weapon - after another court jailed a woman for hitting her granddaughter with a slipper.
The two bizarre rulings came from separate courts in Turkey within weeks of each other.
In the earlier case frail pensioner Asiye Kaytan locked the front door to stop her 18-year-old granddaughter going out to meet friends in August last year (2024).
During a scuffle, a court heard, Kaytan slapped the girl on the arm with her slipper and the teen bashed her gran with her mobile phone, cutting her head. Paramedics who were called to treat Kaytan reported the incident to police, even though neither woman wanted to press charges.
Prosecutors then charged the gran with assault, identifying her slipper as a weapon.
Three months ago Turkey's 12th Criminal Court of First Instance found her guilty and sentenced her to four years and two months in prison.
Defence lawyer Hasan Ozan Orpak says the ruling is being appealed, arguing that slippers are not weapons under Turkish law.
Now prosecutors have dropped a charge of possessing an illegal weapon against a teenager accused of stabbing a 14-year-old boy to death in a market in January.
Victim Mattia Minguzzi, the son of Italian chef Andrea Minguzzi, was shopping in Denizli when he was attacked by the knifeman named as 15-year-old Berkay Budak.
Gruesome security CCTV shows the suspect chasing Mattia through the market before stabbing him with a kitchen knife.
The dying teen was then kicked in the head by another youth, identified as 16-year-old Umutcan Baba.
Despite the deadly stabbing, prosecutors ruled that the kitchen knife was not an offensive weapon but a common household item. The charge for unlawful possession of a weapon was dropped, although the investigation over the killing is still ongoing.
Prosecutors said Mattia died in a spontaneous fight so the knife could not be considered a murder weapon and ordered the charges relating to it to be dropped.
The decision caused outrage in both Turkey and Italy, where Mattia's family has been campaigning to bring his killer to court.
Story: NewsX