International Herald Tribune
Wider involvement suspected in Hrant Dink’s assassination
By Sebnem Arsu
Sunday, January 21, 2007
ISTANBUL
Ogun Samast, the 17-year- old youth who was arrested in connection
with the slaying of a leading Turkish journalist, probably would never
have imagined setting foot on a private plane in his life before he
was flown to Istanbul early Sunday to be charged.
Described as a quiet but courageous boy by his uncle, Faik Samast, the
youth dropped out of secondary school before graduation. He was
unemployed and came from a lower middle class family from Trabzon, a
Black Sea port town.
Why he would want to murder Hrant Dink, an internationally respected
intellectual, remains unclear since Samast had no obvious ties to
militant organizations. People who know him have speculated that he
was put up to the assassination by others who took advantage of his
young age.
Named after the Turkish soccer star Ogun Temizkanoglu, the young
Samast aspired to become a soccer player but failed after managers of
the Yenipelitlispor club, listed in the second amateurs’ league,
expelled him from the team in 2005 because of his undisciplined
behavior, newspapers wrote.
"His father hoped that soccer could make his son more disciplined,"
Hayri Kuk, a team official told NTV. "He refused to accept defeat, but
at the same was totally open to manipulation. He couldn’t have done
this alone." Faik Samast, speaking in an interview on NTV Saturday
night, said: "He was a very quiet boy. Some people must have exploited
him."
Samast’s age and origins in Trabzon are reminiscent of the killing
last year of Andrea Santaro, a Catholic priest, also in Trabzon, by a
16-year-old youth.
Kazim Kolcuoglu, head of the Istanbul Bar Association, said that young
people are sometimes used as assassins because they face lower
penalties than adults convicted of the same crime.
In addition to Samast, six other men have been detained as suspected
collaborators in the killing, and the police are working to decipher
the links between them.
One of the suspects, Yasin Hayal, an alleged Islamic militant who
learned to make bombs from Chechen militants at a camp in Azerbaijan
and who served 11 months in jail for the bombing of a McDonalds
restaurant in Trabzon in 2004, is suspected of masterminding the
attacks on both Dink and Father Santaro.
Although early reports suggested that Samast was affiliated with an
ultranationalist group called Nizam-i Alem, or World Order, the
Istanbul head prosecutor said the teenager had no ties with any known
militant organization.
The center right Vatan newspaper reported that the teenager had
visited Istanbul five times in 15 days and was accompanied by two
people in his last trip a few days ago.
Hurriyet, another center-right paper, quoted his family saying that
Ogun brought lots of cash from Istanbul after a trip more than a week
ago.
A nationwide manhunt for the youth had begun when the boy’s father
identified his son as the one in the videos.
Dressed in the same jean jacket, dark leather shoes and white beret
that he was seen wearing in a surveillance camera video taken just
before the shooting Friday in the Sisli district of Istanbul, Samast
was arrested on a passenger bus as it was leaving the town of Samsun
on the way back to his hometown.
Samast confessed to the killing shortly after his arrest, Samsun’s
chief prosecutor, Ahmet Gokcinar, told the state-run Anatolian news
agency.
He was quoted by the semi-official AA news agency that after he was
unable to meet with Dink at the newspaper, he "went to Friday
prayers. After prayers, I went to the newspaper. At that moment, Hrant
Dink went into a bank. After the bank he went back to the
newspaper. He got startled when he saw me. Ten minutes later, he left
the newspaper. I approached him from behind and shot him from one
meter away. I’m not sorry."
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
