Dink murder suspect’s father was praised for raising “worthy son”

November 16, 2011 - 12:49 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - The father of one of the prime suspects in the 2007 shooting of Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian journalist who was the editor-in-chief of the Agos newspaper, has claimed that he received calls from “state officials” who congratulated him on having raised a worthy son, Today’s Zaman reported.

Bahattin Hayal, the father of Yasin Hayal, accused of having solicited Dink’s shooter Ogün Samast to carry out the murder, spoke to journalists following the latest session of the trial held on Monday, November 14.

The session was the 21st hearing being heard by the İstanbul 14th Heavy Criminal Court. The court ruled that Yasin Hayal was criminally liable based on experts’ reports on his psychiatric condition filed by the Council of Forensic Medicine (ATK).

Bahattin Hayal said he had reported the congratulatory phone calls in his initial testimony, but two prosecutors from Trabzon told him his statement could give him trouble. He said he had a meeting at the local police department shortly after the Dink murder, where he was told by officials that his son worked for the state and took care of important business.

“These prosecutors told me that I could get in trouble if I didn’t change my statement,” he said, noting that he was congratulated by a “state official,” without giving any names. The official told him that he had raised a “worthy son who had served his country.”

He did, however, name the person who revealed his son’s position as a state agent during his meeting at the Trabzon Police Department’s Counterterrorism Unit. Bahattin Hayal claimed that officer Yahya Öztürk told him that the state needed people like Yasin, and assured him that he would be out in no time. He said that Prosecutor Ali Can had called him five or six months after the meeting and recommended he retract his statement, but he refused. “He threatened me,” Bahattin Hayal noted.

He also said that his son had no idea who Dink was. “Yasin didn’t know who Hrant Dink was. Erhan [Tuncel, another suspect in the murder] showed him a picture on the computer, telling him, ‘This is the Atatürk of the Armenians’.”

The next hearing in the Dink trial is scheduled for Dec. 5.