Turkey’s Human Rights Commission submits Dink report to prosecutors

PanARMENIAN.Net - The parliamentary Human Rights Commission has sent a report it had completed earlier on the negligence of some members of the police department and gendarmerie in the murder of journalist Hrant Dink and submitted it to the Trabzon Prosecutor’s Office.

The Turkish-Armenian journalist was killed in broad daylight on Jan. 19, 2007 in front of the offices of the Agos newspaper in Istanbul, where he was the editor-in-chief, by an ultranationalist teenager from Trabzon.

The Trabzon Prosecutor’s Office, after a preliminary probe it conducted in 2007, had said it saw no reason to investigate whether negligence of officers in the police department and the gendarmerie played a role in the events that led up to Dink’s murder. However, the Dink family appealed the ruling at the Rize High Criminal Court, which ruled for an expansion of the investigation. The Trabzon Prosecutor’s Office is also conducting this new investigation under court order. The Rize court had overturned the prosecutor’s decision to dismiss the investigation on procedural grounds, citing inadequacies and missing steps in the investigation.

Eight military officers, including then Trabzon Gendarmerie Battalion Commander Col. Ali Oz, are facing trial on charges of negligence of duty at the Trabzon 2nd Peace Criminal Court. Oz is facing a separate trial being heard by the Trabzon 1st High Criminal Court.

The Trabzon Prosecutor’s Office, striving to complete the missing procedures as demanded by the Rize court, last month asked for a copy of the Human Rights Commission’s report on the Dink murder.

An announcement from Parliament said the report was sent to the Trabzon Prosecutor’s Office on Wednesday, Today’s Zaman reported.