Two men have been charged in relation to the murder of a father of five whose body was found in the boot of a burnt-out car on the outskirts of Melbourne.
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The charred remains of Kenan Balikel were found near Diggers Rest on October 31 last year.
A 58-year-old from Keilor Downs has been charged with murder, and Ante Bacak, 45, from Kealba, was charged with being an accessory to murder.
Mr Bacak appeared briefly in Melbourne Magistrates Court on Friday, where he was granted bail on the conditions he report to police three times a week and surrender his passport.
A charge sheet tendered to court alleges that Mr Bacak helped the other man set alight Mr Balikel's car while his body was in the boot, and that he also made a false statement to police.
Defence counsel Robert Stary told the court Mr Bacak only became involved "after the injuries are inflicted". Mr Bacak is due to return to court in June. The 58-year-old man was yet to face court by Friday afternoon.
Mr Balikel, 42, lived in Footscray and was celebrating the birth of his fifth child when he was killed. He had bought cars at auction that he would fix and sell for a profit, and was also planning on opening a restaurant with his wife.
Detectives were investigating whether Mr Balikel had been killed because of a car trade that had gone wrong. It was suspected he had been killed near Tullamarine, and then driven in the boot of his unregistered grey Peugeot 407 wagon to Diggers Rest.
Last Friday, police released information about the possible route taken by the driver of the Peugeot. At the time, they said that another car had probably followed the wagon so that the driver could leave the scene after dumping Mr Balikel's body.
Detectives were examining CCTV footage from surrounding areas to try and identify the second vehicle.
Mr Balikel was last seen alive leaving a mechanic's workshop on Freight Road in Tullamarine on the afternoon of October 30.
Turkish community leader Mehmet Balikel said he had spoken to his son the day before he vanished and had said he was happy, "but something [was] wrong".
"It's very hard, very hard, we want to find out who has done these things," he told Fairfax Media in November.
"He's a very nice boy, everybody likes him, everybody knows him. He didn't do something wrong, I don't know what's happened."
