ISTANBUL POLICE CHIEF INVESTIGATED IN JOURNALIST MURDER
Agence France Presse — English
February 7, 2007 Wednesday
Turkey’s interior ministry has ordered an investigation against
Istanbul’s police chief and a senior officer amid charges that police
failed to act on threats against slain ethnic Armenian journalist
Hrant Dink, a ministry official said Wednesday.
The probe against police chief Celalettin Cerrah and Ahmet Ilhan Guler,
former head of Istanbul police’s intelligence unit, follows a request
by investigators probing alleged police negligence in Dink’s killing,
the offical told AFP on the condition of anonymity.
"The inspectors have found certain administrative and judicial faults
by these two officers. They will now be asked to give a statement
with regards to the findings," he added.
Investigators will then decide whether there is a need for a judicial
investigation against the two officers which could pave the way for
charges against them, he added.
The Istanbul police has come under intense criticism following the
January 19 murder amid media reports that they received a tip-off
last year of a plot to kill the 52-year-old editor of the bilingual
Agos weekly, but did not follow up on it.
Police have arrested eight suspects, all hailing from the northern
city of Trabzon, in connection with Dink’s murder.
One of them, 17-year-old Ogun Samast, has confessed to killing Dink,
a prominent member of Turkey’s small Armenian community who was hated
by nationalists for labelling as genocide the World War I killings
of Armenians.
Another is Yasin Hayal, 26, who served 11 months in jail for a 2004
bomb blast outside a McDonald’s restaurant in Trabzon and allegedly
gave Samast money and a gun to kill Dink.
Trabzon’s governor and police chief have already been removed from
office amid accusations that they failed to seriously investigate
groups of youths under the sway of ultra-nationalist and Islamist
ideas.
The probe into Dink’s murder has proved a serious embarrassment for
the Turkish security forces.
Ten members of the police and a paramilitary force have been dismissed
from their posts in the northern city of Samsun, where Samast was
arrested on January 20, after a video was leaked to the media last
week showing security forces posing with the alleged assailant for
"souvenir pictures".
The police 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 that he was receiving threats
and hate mail.