“An American journalist was murdered. Her throat was slit along with her mother's in her apartment in Istanbul. And no one gave a damn.”
in Turkey the following year. How could a small debt motivate a man to commit a double murder? Did the Turkish National Police investigate whether the suspected killer acted alone? And why did the FBI, the agency responsible for investigating the killings of Americans abroad, decline to pursue the case?Orouba's Twitter account appeared to have been hacked
In the three years since their deaths, a trans-Atlantic team of journalists – some based in Turkey, others in the United States, some of whom knew Halla and Orouba personally, others who did not – has been seeking answers to those questions on the Barakats’ behalf.
against Syria in 2019 for the death of war correspondent Marie Colvin, in a case that depended in part on documents and testimony provided by Barakat, the former intelligence officer. “There were reasons to expect that this might be more than just a robbery or just a routine homicide,” Price told ABC News and Reveal. “The motivation and the scale of the crime didn’t fit the scene. … It doesn’t add up.”Elif Ozturk/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images, FILE
On Sept. 19, 2017, security camera footage obtained by investigators shows Ahmed walking away from a bus station in Istanbul’s Küçüksu neighborhood in the direction of Halla and Orouba’s apartment. The cameras capture him at multiple points along the route, and he is last seen just a few blocks away.
Material evidence of Ahmed’s presence inside the apartment, however, was contradictory. Investigators took swabs from Halla and Orouba’s bodies twice – once at the crime scene and again during the autopsy. While forensic experts who examined the crime scene swabs reported that DNA matching Ahmed’s profile was discovered under one of Orouba’s fingernails, the autopsy report concluded that there was no foreign DNA found on Orouba’s body at all.
“Ahmed alone cannot kill them. No way,” Maen Barakat told ABC News and Reveal. “Ahmed was an accomplice in the crime.”
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