Nineteen police officers charged with negligence in the investigation into the assassination of Hrant Dink have been cleared by a report drafted by Interior Ministry investigators, Today’s Zaman reported.

The Prime Ministry Inspection Board had requested that the Interior Ministry investigate 19 police officers working at the Trabzon Police Station and the National Police Department’s intelligence unit following the filing of a request by Dink’s wife, Rakel Dink, who accused the officers of negligence egregious enough to allow the assassination to take place.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan also requested that the charges be looked into. The Inspection Board decided that there was a “possibility” that the police - including former intelligence unit heads Ramazan Akyurek and Sabri Uzun, former intelligence unit deputy chiefs Necmettin Emre and Vedat Yavuz and former Trabzon Police Chief Resat Altay - had demonstrated negligence and so requested that the Interior Ministry investigate. Ministry investigators drafted a report upon the conclusion of their probe, saying that the 19 officers named were not criminally negligent in connection to the murder.

Lawyers representing the co-plaintiffs in the Dink trial have long alleged that the murder was the doing of Ergenekon, a clandestine group charged with plotting to overthrow the government. One of the Dink family lawyers, Deniz Tuna, said last month, before the Interior Ministry’s investigation was concluded: “Security personnel were informed beforehand about the assassination plot and did not take steps to stop it. They are being protected by certain authorities in an attempted cover-up. We are talking about the state’s security forces: the gendarmerie, police and intelligence agencies.”

Hrant Dink (September 15, 1954 – January 19, 2007) was a Turkish-Armenian journalist, columnist and editor-in-chief of Agos bilingual newspaper. Dink was best known for advocating Turkish-Armenian reconciliation and human and minority rights in Turkey. Charged under the notorious article 301 of the Turkish Criminal Code, Dink stood a trial for insulting Turkishness. After numerous death threats, Hrant Dink was assassinated in Istanbul in January 2007, by Ogün Samast, a 17-year-old Turkish nationalist.