A court in the southern city of Antalya rejected a release plea by Muhammet Harake, a German hip-hop singer, over murder charges. Harake was arrested on murder charges over the death of German national Katharina Kugel on June 9, 2018.

Harake's lawyer has claimed there was no concrete evidence implicating the singer in the drowning death of the 35-year-old woman whose lifeless body was found floating off a beach in Antalya's Alanya district where she was on vacation.

The suspect was arrested after a Turkish friend of Kugel told police that the victim left the disco they were at with a man she met before she was found dead. Police identified Harake as the man she left with and arrested him in a house in Alanya. The singer has claimed in his first testimony to police that he swam together with Kugel before her death. "The water is cold and I left her there. She was still swimming when I last saw her," he claimed.