Family charged with death of 15-year-old Muslim girl

A MAGISTRATE in the Alsace town of Colmar has charged the parents and the two brothers of a murdered Turkish girl with premeditated homicide. The 15-year-old girl was found dead, according to friends, after she refused to observe Muslim traditions as her family demanded.

Nasmiye Llikpinar's body was found on 15 August by a suburban roadside near the largely immigrant area where the family lived. She had been suffocated. Two days earlier she had been seen at a village dance. Her parents and her brothers were charged on Saturday.

According to friends at the Lycee Moliere where she was a pupil, Nasmiye was in love with a young Moroccan. Unlike some other Muslim girls at the school, she did not wear the veil. She frequented the local swimming pool and was in the habit of going out in the evenings, all things which are anathema to strict Muslim believers.

Schoolfriends said Nasmiye had complained of beatings at the hands of her father, Mustafa, 52, and her brothers, aged 19 and 21. Occasionally she asked to stay in friends' homes to keep out of their way, they said. She told them that her parents insisted that she should marry a Turk of their choice.

Earlier this year, she asked a social worker to help her leave her family. At the end of June, a judge responded by sending her to a hostel in Strasbourg. She left on 9 August, apparently because she missed her boyfriend, friends said.

Despite a common religion, immigrants in Colmar said that there was a good deal of tension between Turks in the town and the predominant North African Arab immigrant community. 'The Turkish woman always walks behind the men,' said a young Algerian.

'That's a way of saying 'You are not the Arabs, we are'. That pride could well have led to the sacrifice of one of their own.'