MWC News, Canada
Jan 28 2007

Turkish ferry hijacker arrested

Global
By Agencies

A man who threatened to blow up a ferry in Turkey with 80 people on
board has been arrested by police.

The man, a Turk named Nihat Acar, said he carried out the hijacking
in protest against pro-Armenian slogans chanted at the funeral of
Hrant Dink, the ethnic Albanian journalist shot dead earlier this
month, an official said.

Acar, claiming to be armed and to have plastic explosives on him,
seized the ferry in the Dardanelles strait as it was on its way from
Gelibolu to Lapseki late on Saturday, said Yusuf Ziya Ince, the
deputy governor of Canakkale province.

He was carrying a fake gun but no explosives, Ince said.

Military discharge

Police are investigating reports that Acar was a former army
sergeant.

Dogan news agency said Acar was discharged from the military in 2002
for disciplinary reasons, but did not provide details.

Television footage showed the man shouting, "I did it for the
country", as he was being led away from the ferry to a police
vehicle.

Dink had spoken out about the mass killings of Armenians in the early
20th century and had received a six-month suspended sentence in
October for "insulting Turkishness".

Tens of thousands of people filled the streets of Istanbul for his
funeral, many chanting slogans such as "We are all Armenians" and
"Shoulder to shoulder against fascism".

Unemployed secondary school graduate Ogun Samast, 17, has admitted to
shooting Dink as the journalist left the offices of his newspaper,
Agos, in Istanbul on January 19.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress