TURKISH PROSECUTORS INTERROGATE 2 NEW SUSPECTS IN KILLING OF ETHNIC ARMENIAN JOURNALIST
AP Worldstream
Feb 26, 2007
Turkish prosecutors on Monday interrogated two new suspects in the
killing of an ethnic Armenian journalist, who were detained over
the weekend.
Police detained the two on Saturday in Trabzon, the Black Sea port
city where all eight other suspects, including the alleged teenage
triggerman, lived.
Police, meanwhile, released another suspect in Istanbul following his
interrogation over the weekend, the state-run Anatolia news agency
reported Monday.
Last month’s killing of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in
Istanbul prompted international condemnation as well as debate within
Turkey about free speech, and whether state institutions were tolerant
of militant nationalists.
On Friday, a group of activists invited prosecutors to press charges
against them in a protest against a law that restricts free speech
and has been used to prosecute intellectuals.
Five members of the small Powerful Turkey Party stood in front
of a prosecutor at a courthouse and repeated statements by Nobel
Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk, slain journalist Dink and other
intellectuals that were used as evidence to prosecute them under
Article 301 of Turkey’s penal code, which bans insults to Turkish
identity.
The group, including party leader Tuna Bekleyic, then asked the
prosecutor to file charges against them. Prosecutors would have to
investigate Bekleyic and his friends before opening any lawsuit,
and none of the activists were arrested.
More members of the party, which has just a few thousand adherents
in a country of 70 million, were expected to conduct a similar act
of civil disobedience this week.
Article 301 makes denigrating Turkish identity a crime punishable by
up to three years in prison.
Pamuk and Dink had both spoken out about the mass killings of Armenians
by Turks in the early 20th century, an issue that remains sensitive
today.
Numerous other writers, journalists and academics have also been
prosecuted.
Dink was shot outside his Istanbul office on Jan. 19 and his murder
revived a debate about the law. His prosecution under Article 301
turned him into a reviled figure among radical nationalists, some of
whom were arrested in connection with his killing.