Turkish court says evidence of terror links in Dink murder insufficient

PanARMENIAN.Net - An Istanbul high criminal court on Thursday, Feb 23, said there was no involvement of an organized criminal network in the 2007 killing of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, citing “insufficient evidence to prove wider involvement in the murder.”

According to Today's Zaman, the Istanbul 14th High Criminal Court said in its 216-page-long reasoned decision, distributed to lawyers involved in the case, that the court could not establish that the journalist was killed by an organized criminal network.

In what many said was a shocking and frustrating ruling in the five-year-long trial of the Dink case, the Istanbul court last month cleared all suspects of charges of membership in a criminal organization, angering lawyers and many others who say the trial failed to shed light on alleged connections between the suspects and state officials.

The court convicted Yasin Hayal, a major suspect in the killing of Dink, of instigating a murder and sentenced him to life in prison. Another suspected instigator, Erhan Tuncel, was acquitted by the court.

Dink was shot dead on Jan. 19, 2007 by ultranationalist Ogün Samast outside the offices of his newspaper in İstanbul in broad daylight. Even though five years have passed since his assassination, Dink family lawyers and civil society organizations have long remained concerned that evidence relating to the real perpetrators of the crime is still being covered up and that even if the court's ruling punishes the hit men, the public's sense of justice will not be satisfied.