Turkey’s Interior Ministry calls compensation to Dink family “unjustified enrichment”

Turkey’s Interior Ministry calls compensation to Dink family “unjustified enrichment”

PanARMENIAN.Net - Turkey’s Interior Ministry has denied any responsibility in Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink’s assassination, claiming in a failed appeal to the Council of State that paying compensation to the man’s family would lead to “unjustified enrichment.”

“The [plaintiff] would have had to have felt great anguish and grief as a consequence of an unlawful operation or an act by the administration for non-pecuniary damages to be imposed [on the defendant,]” the Interior Ministry said in appeal.

Paying 100,000 Turkish Liras in compensation for non-pecuniary damages would lead to “unjustified enrichment” for Dink’s family, the Ministry further said, Hurriyet Daily News reported.

The 10th Istanbul Administrative Court ordered the Interior Ministry on Oct. 27, 2010, to pay 100,000 liras in damages to Hosrof and Yervant Dink, Hrant Dink’s two brothers, due to the gross dereliction of duty allegedly committed by the Ministry in Dink’s assassination. The court said the Ministry had not prevented the murder and failed to protect Dink despite the fact that it was in possession of sufficient evidence that there was a plot against the journalist’s life.

The Interior Ministry then appealed to the Council of State for the execution to be stayed. The Council of State, however, denied the Ministry’s appeals. The Interior Ministry also said the lawsuit against it should have been filed at a court of first instance, rather than at an administrative court; it also referred to Dink’s assassination as a “nefarious attack” in its appeal to the Council of State.

Dink was the editor of Agos and Turkey’s best known Armenian voice abroad. He was shot in broad daylight as he left his office in Istanbul’s Şişli district in 2007.

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