Turkish journalist offers to start Dink murder investigation anew

PanARMENIAN.Net - Considering the fact that the final court ruling in the murder case of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in 2007 has not fulfilled the public’s sense of justice, Bugün daily Ankara representative Adem Yavuz Arslan said the investigation into the murder case of Dink should be taken back to square one and this time handled with determination to thoroughly resolve the case.

“What actually needs to be done now is to re-handle the Dink murder case as if the murder took place today, and to do this with determination to resolve it,” Arslan told Sunday’s Zaman.

The late editor-in-chief of the Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, Dink was shot dead in broad daylight on Jan 19, 2007, by an ultranationalist teenager outside the offices of his newspaper in Istanbul. The gunman, Ogün Samast, and 18 others were brought to trial. The investigation into his murder was stalled, but the suspected perpetrator and his accomplices were put on trial. However, the final ruling of the Istanbul 14th High Criminal Court issued last month failed to please those expecting justice to be served. During the process, lawyers for the Dink family and the co-plaintiffs in the case presented evidence indicating that Samast did not act alone. Samast was recently sentenced to 22 years, 10 months in prison by the court. In a separate trial, two gendarmerie officers were convicted on charges of dereliction of duty in the run-up to the Dink murder.

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, was found not guilty of masterminding the murder.

The prosecution believes the killers are affiliated with the Ergenekon network, a shadowy crime network that has alleged links within the state, whose suspected members are currently standing trial on charges of plotting to overthrow the government.

“The court’s ruling has confirmed how Ergenekon is still very strong,” said Arslan.

“It is very obvious that the Hrant Dink murder is an operation included in the Cage Operation Action Plan,” he added.

The Cage Operation Action Plan is an alleged military plot to intimidate the country’s non-Muslim population by assassinating some of their prominent community figures. The Cage plan called the killings of Dink, Catholic priest Father Andrea Santoro and three Christians in Malatya an “operation.”

According to the police report, the mastermind behind the Cage plan was İbrahim Şahin, the former deputy chief of the National Police Department’s Special Operations Unit.

“When we look at the murder of Dink in general and its planning in Trabzon and Istanbul, we see the signs of Cage Operation Action Plan,” Arslan said, Today’s Zaman reported.