A wider involvement in Hrant Dink’s assassination is suspected
By Sebnem Arsu Published: January 22, 2007
International Herald Tribune, France
Jan 22 2007
ISTANBUL: Ogun Samast, the 17-year- old 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.
Why he would want to kill 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."
Both Samast’s age and origins in Trabzon revived memories about
the killing last year of Andrea Santaro, a Catholic priest, also in
Trabzon, by a 16- year-old.
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, who served 11 months in jail for the
bombing of a McDonald’s restaurant in Trabzon in 2004, is suspected
of masterminding the attacks on both Dink and Santaro, according to
the police.
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 newspaper Vatan 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 as saying
that Ogun brought lots of cash from Istanbul after a trip there more
than a week ago.
Dressed in the same jeans 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. A nationwide manhunt for the youth
had begun when the boy’s father identified his son as the person in
the video.
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 semiofficial 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."
NTV television quoted unnamed sources saying that he had expressed
no regrets about what he had done.
As a 17-year-old, Samast will be interrogated by a public prosecutor
instead of the police, and will be tried at a minors’ court, which
could serve to lessen any prison term.