We have already heard in the past about heavy punishments, such as ten life sentences or more. But a prison sentence of over 1,000 years? We haven’t heard about it yet.
The 66-year-old Turkish TV personality Adnan Oktar was jailed last year on a series of charges against him for sexual abuse of minors, fraud and attempted political and military espionage. This ruling was eventually overturned, but in a retrial held in his case yesterday (November 16th), the man was sentenced to 8,658 years in prison – eight times his original sentence, for sexual abuse of minors, fraud, forcing women into sexual slavery and forcing them to undergo cosmetic surgery without anesthesia .
14 of his associates were also sentenced to long prison sentences. Oktar gained fame when he hosted a talk show on the Turkish TV channel A9, which dealt with Islamic religious matters with the participation of beautiful models. The women associated with him were called “kittens” and his cult boasted about 160 members at one point.
Although the women who took part in the sex cult supported the man, many others claimed they left because they were sexually abused by Oktar. Saada Isilder, a former member of the sect, fled from Oktar’s home in Turkey to Canada. She previously told The Sunday Times how he lured her into joining and forced her to undergo a nose job without any anesthesia or pain relief.
She said: “It was terrible. I still remember the hammer blows. I counted the times they hit my nose with a chisel and a hammer.” Isildar claimed that she was still in school when she and the instructor met, and that she was forced to marry him.
Another woman previously testified at his trial that Oktar had sexually assaulted her and other women. In addition, she revealed that they were forced to take birth control pills. The police found a huge amount of birth control pills in his house, about 69 thousand packs, which he said were used to treat skin disorders and problems with the regularity of the women’s periods.
Saylan Uzogul, another victim of Oktar’s sexual abuse, explained how the women became “Hindu” once they joined the sect. She told the “Sunday Times”: “It didn’t happen overnight, it took something like a year, until I started to ‘flow’ with the actions he required me to do. Even the stupidest things started to make sense to me after a year. Suddenly it seemed normal, Everyone around me did these things.”
One of the victims claimed that in her opinion there were about 200 women in the sect. Oktar has maintained his innocence and insisted that the accusations that he started a sex cult is an “urban legend”.