SHOT FIRED AT CEREMONY FOR SLAIN TURKISH JOURNALIST

Agence France Presse — English
March 4, 2007 Sunday 4:18 PM GMT

An unidentified gunman fired a shot in the air outside an Armenian
church in Istanbul Sunday shortly after a ceremony for a slain
Turkish-Armenian journalist, a church official said.

The gunman and another person fled on foot from the courtyard of
the church in Kumkapi district where a ceremony had been held for
the murdered Hrant Dink, the official told journalists on condition
of anonymity.

"We chased them down the street but were unable to catch them,"
he said.

The ceremony at the church in the European side of Istanbul was to
mark the 40th day since Dink, the 52-year-old ethnic Armenian editor
of the bilingual Agos weekly, was shot dead outside his office.

It was led by Patriarch Mesrob II, the spiritual leader of Turkey’s
80,000 Armenians, and attended by Dink’s family and leading
intellectuals.

Dink had won the wrath of nationalist circles and the courts for
describing as genocide the World War I massacres of Armenians under
the Ottoman Empire, a label that Ankara fiercely rejects.

Nine people have so far been charged over his murder which prosecutors
believe was the work of ultranationalists.