A lawyer allegedly tried to wipe CCTV footage linking her husband to a homicide, after the pair exchanged frantic and emotional textual content messages.
In May 2019, Sydney solicitor Alev Rojda Oncu was wanting ahead to taking day off work when her husband Ali Cevik was arrested and charged with homicide.
“We have just over a month to our holiday. Don’t do anything stupid,” she texted him hours earlier than he and three others dedicated the heinous crime.
Cevik pleaded responsible to the homicide.
Thirty-two-year-old Oncu is on trial in Parramatta District Court accused of trying to destroy recordings from cameras at her Blacktown house on May 28, 2019 to pervert the course of justice or, alternatively, to mislead a judicial tribunal.
“She knew what was on the footage, she attempted to destroy it, she knew that Ali Cevik had been arrested for murder,” crown prosecutor Philip Hogan instructed a jury final week.
Details of the proceedings had been made public on Tuesday, nonetheless particulars concerning the homicide stay topic to a courtroom order.
The jury was performed cellphone calls with Oncu, recorded by police earlier than the homicide, exhibiting Cevik in an emotional state and swearing at his spouse.
“Don’t go anywhere tonight. You’re really heavily drugged out Ali. Come home and do whatever it is when you sober up,” Oncu texted her husband.
“If you don’t do it for yourself, do it for me.”
As Cevik was languishing in a cell at St Mary’s Police Station after his arrest, Oncu didn’t know the place he was.
She texted that she was scared and missed him.
“I love you. Please come home,” she mentioned.
From the police station, Cevik was allowed to ring his lawyer.
After a go to in Blacktown from the lawyer the place Oncu listened to her husband over speakerphone, she went beneath the primary home to the place the CCTV tools was saved, first with a laundry basket after which with two others carrying a black bag, the jury heard.
On the night of May 28, she known as technician Salar Norouzi and allegedly requested him how one can format the CCTV arduous drive.
“He showed her that the hard drive was full and that if she pushed the reformat button, it would be empty,” Mr Hogan mentioned.
“She then pushed the reformat button, emptied the hard drive.”
When police reviewed the footage in a while, they discovered the whole lot from earlier than Norouzi’s go to had been erased.
Oncu allegedly instructed attending officers that the CCTV cameras did not report.
“The Crown says she was lying when she said that,” Hogan mentioned.
In August 2022, police had been capable of retrieve the lacking footage utilizing up to date software program.
Oncu’s barrister Mike Smith mentioned she had no involvement within the homicide and denied she requested Norouzi to wipe the arduous drive.
“The suggestion that the accused directed, told or requested Mr Norouzi to delete any footage is denied in the strongest possible terms. It did not happen,” he mentioned.
Smith requested the jury to rigorously assessment the CCTV footage, saying it didn’t essentially present the Crown’s variations of occasions.
The 4 males concerned within the homicide, together with Cevik, both pleaded responsible or had been discovered by a jury to be responsible.
A fifth man pleaded responsible to being an adjunct.
The trial with Judge Mark Buscombe continues.
Source: www.9news.com.au
