DINK MURDER PROBE WIDENS TO INCLUDE CHIEF OF POLICE

Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Feb 8 2007

The chief police official of Ýstanbul may face an investigation
over an alleged failure to follow up a tip-off about a plot to kill
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, news reports said Wednesday.

On Monday, the Interior Ministry sacked Ýstanbul Police Intelligence
Chief Ahmet Ýlhan Guler as part of an ongoing probe over allegations
that the security organizations failed to take measures that could
have saved Dink’s life.

The dismissal of Guler was received with suspicion in the media,
which said he apparently "sacrificed" himself to save Istanbul Police
Chief Celalettin Cerrah. Guler reportedly told inspectors that he had
received the tip-off from a police informant about plans to kill Dink
some 11 months before the murder but had never reported it to Cerrah
because he thought the information was not reliable.

Inspectors investigating the allegations have asked for permission to
launch a preliminary investigation into Cerrah and Interior Minister
Abdulkadir Aksu swiftly gave the authorization, daily Sabah said.

Cerrah may face a full investigation if the preliminary investigation
results show this is necessary.

Dink, editor of the bilingual Agos daily, was gunned down in broad
daylight on Jan. Dink was tried and sentenced to a six-month suspended
imprisonment for an article he wrote about an alleged genocide of
Armenians and the Armenian diaspora’s attitude toward it.

Some five policemen and five members of the gendarmerie have been
dismissed in a separate investigation launched after a leak to the
media of scandalous footage showing members of both the police and
gendarmerie posing for souvenir photos with Samast at a police station
in Samsun, where Samast had been arrested after a nationwide manhunt.

Newspapers reported that the gendarmerie had also been given the
same tip-off about the plot to kill Dink, but it also ignored the
warning. News reports said yesterday that one of the suspects in the
case, 24-year-old Yasin Hayal who has earlier confessed to inciting
the murder, has changed his initial testimony and said Erhan Tuncel,
the police informant who reportedly gave the tip-off to the police
and gendarmerie, had incited the killing. Tuncel is one of the chief
suspects in the case and is currently in jail.

–Boundary_(ID_JLv77Jiu6XK74cFDvM4ARA)–