The Media Line, NY
Jan 21 2007
Suspected Assassin of Armenian Editor Confesses
Written by The Media Line Staff
Published Sunday, January 21, 2007
The Turkish police have detained Ogün Samast, a teenager suspected of
killing the editor in chief of the Armenian community’s newspaper in
Istanbul, Hrant Dink, the Turkish Daily News reported.
After his father called the police, Samast was captured on a bus in
the city of Samsun. The suspect confessed to the murder early Sunday
morning.
"I thank the judiciary and the police for their success in capturing
the suspected assassin in such a short time," Turkey’s Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdoðan said on Turkish TV.
Dink was murdered over the weekend in front of the offices of Agos,
the newspaper he had headed in Istanbul since 1996. Dink, a Turkish
citizen of Armenian descent, was put on trial last year for
"insulting Turkishness," after he called on the Turkish government to
recognize the existence of the Armenian holocaust in 1915.
In 2004, Dink received a six-month suspended sentence. Dink appealed
and in February 2006 he was acquitted. In July 2006 he received
another six-month suspended sentence after writing an article that
called for Armenians to "now turn their attention to the new life
offered by an independent Armenia." One week later, the Istanbul
public prosecutor opened a new case against him, this time for
referring to the 1915 massacre of Armenians as genocide. Dink was
awaiting his trial on those charges when he was killed.
Erdoðan condemned the murder, saying the "attack was against all of
us, against our unity, peace and stability."
Thousands of Turks, mainly of Armenian descent, gathered in Istanbul
a few hours after the murder for a sit-in demonstration.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
