A Syrian national accused of killing Russian feminist and anti-war activist Anastasia Emelyanova has been acquitted of murder charges due to lack of evidence, Turkish and Russian media reported on Monday.
Mohammed Nizar Alnabeh was arrested in September after his then-girlfriend Yemelyanova was found dead in their shared apartment in the eastern Turkish city of Erzurum.
According to Turkish media, Emelyanova, who moved to Turkey after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and later settled in Erzurum where she lived with Arnabeh, died from blood loss after a medical examination.
Alnabeh has denied the murder charges, but local women’s rights activists claim he changed his testimony four times at the start of a criminal investigation into the activist’s death.
According to Turkish daily Hurriyet, the Erzurum First High Criminal Court acquitted Arnabeh of intentionally killing the woman, a serious crime punishable by life imprisonment.
Begum Osma, a volunteer lawyer with the NGO Women and Children First Association, said the acquittal was “unexpected” given reported contradictions in Alnabeh’s testimony and vowed to appeal the court’s decision.
Alnabeh’s lawyers also said they were “considering an appeal” against the sentence because it had not been proven that a crime had been committed, according to the Hurriyet newspaper.
Investigators had previously accused Arnabe of assaulting Emelyanova and cutting her legs with shards of glass.
According to independent Russian news site Mediazona, Arnabe initially claimed he had accidentally pushed Emelyanova, causing her to fall onto a glass coffee table.
The man then confessed to stabbing Emelianova in the leg with a shard of glass, but ultimately denied being in the house at the time of her death.
