Former Police Chief blames Istanbul Police for failing to protect Dink

PanARMENIAN.Net - Former Police Chief Ali Fuat Yılmazer has said that he cannot be held responsible for the killing of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink as he was not even serving in Istanbul when the incident occurred, adding that the Istanbul Police Department is at fault for failing to protect Dink despite there being intelligence leading up to the assassination, Today’s Zaman said.

Yılmazer testified as a suspect in the investigation into the killing of Dink.

In his testimony, he said that he was employed in Ankara when the incident took place. Stating that the Istanbul Police Department was responsible for providing guards to protect Dink when it received intelligence he was in danger, Yılmazer said that the fact that he is being connected to the murder is clearly slander. He pointed to earlier inspectors' reports that stated Yılmazer had not been involved in any misconduct regarding the incident.

Dink was assassinated in broad daylight outside the office of his Agos newspaper on Jan. 17, 2007.

Yılmazer testified to Prosecutor Yusuf Hakkı Doğan for five hours, saying that he was the chief of Branch C of the Intelligence Unit of the Ankara Police Department when the assassination took place, and that the accusations against him were put forward in relation to two statements saying that Dink was in danger being sent to Branch C by the Trabzon Police Department.

He stated that he was on duty abroad when the two statements arrived at the branch on Feb. 17, 2006, and he therefore did not see them. He added that a perception operation is being conducted against his name and that the two statements were actually directed to the Istanbul Police Department. He said the statements were merely sent to his branch to keep them informed, adding that it was the Istanbul Police Department who was responsible in taking the necessary security measures to protect Dink.

The suspect also said that “everybody knows how it works, but someone just wants to make me look suspicious,” emphasizing that all accusations against him constitute slander.

He is currently behind bars on wiretapping charges.

Yılmazer had also released a press statement via his lawyer on Oct. 23 in which he denied some media reports that linked him with the Dink murder. He had said the reports manipulated testimony given by Ramazan Akyürek, the former head of the National Police Department's intelligence unit, who testified as a suspect in an ongoing investigation into the killing of Dink in January of this year.

One report claimed that Akyürek cited Yılmazer as a person responsible for the murder. In his statement in October, Yılmazer emphasized that he had not even been serving in Istanbul during the time when the murder took place. “It is [due to] bad intentions that my name has been given when others were serving at the Istanbul Police Department at that time. Others are being protected,” Yılmazer said.

Dink was shot and killed by an ultra-nationalist teenager seven years ago. The hit man, Ogün Samast, and 18 others were brought to trial. During the process, the lawyers for the Dink family and the co-plaintiffs in the case presented evidence indicating that Samast did not act alone. Another suspect, Yasin Hayal, was given life in prison for inciting Samast to murder. However, Erhan Tuncel, who worked as an informant for the Trabzon Police Department and was the man accused of initiating the effort to have Dink murdered, was found not guilty.