Agence France Presse — English
February 2, 2007 Friday 10:49 AM GMT

Turkish security forces probed for posing with alleged murderer

The Turkish security forces faced fresh embarrassment on Friday, when
it emerged that some of its members had posed for "souvenir pictures"
with the alleged murderer of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

Film footage and photos leaked to the media showed the teenage
gunman, who has confessed to the murder, posing with a Turkish flag,
flanked by two members of the security forces. Behind them is a
calendar featuring a Turkish flag and the words of the country’s
founder, Ataturk: "The motherland’s soil is sacred. It cannot be left
to its destiny."

The footage was filmed in the northern city of Samsun, where
17-year-old Ogun Samast was arrested 32 hours after Dink was gunned
down in central Istanbul on January 19. Dink was loathed by
nationalists for describing as "genocide" the massacres of Armenians
under the Ottoman Empire.

Samsun’s chief prosecutor, Ahmet Gokcinar, told Anatolia news agency
that an investigation had been launched into the incident, targeting
both the city’s police and a paramilitary force policing rural areas.

The police are already facing allegations that they had received a
tip-off last year about a plot to kill Dink but did not follow up on
the intelligence.

They are also under fire for failing to grant Dink special
protection, even though the journalist mentioned in articles in his
bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos about receiving threats and
hate mail.

Furious over the footage, the press accused the Samsun security
forces of treating Samast as a "hero".

"A kiss on the forehead is the only thing the murderer was not
given," growled liberal paper Radikal. "This is the picture of the
mindset that killed Dink".

"Shoulder to shoulder with the gunman," trumpeted the
mass-circulation Sabah newspaper, while the popular Vatan said the
footage was "as grave as the assassination itself".

Apart from Samast, seven other suspects have been arrested over the
murder. All come from the northern city of Trabzon. The nationalist
stronghold has come under the spotlight with a series of violent
incidents, including the murder of an Italian Catholic priest by a
16-year-old boy last year.

The probe has so far suggested that the suspects, all young people,
did not belong to any known underground group but were under the sway
of ultra-nationalist ideas and wanted to take the law into their own
hands against what they saw as rising threats to Turkey’s unity.

Trabzon’s governor and police chief were removed from office last
week.