SLAIN JOURNALIST’S FAMILY DEMANDS PROBE AGAINST TURKISH POLICE

Agence France Presse — English
March 15, 2007 Thursday 3:06 PM GMT

Lawyers for the family of slain Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant
Dink on Thursday filed a motion for a judicial probe into officials
they accused of being implicated in the murder.

"We submitted to the prosecutor a request for a (judicial)
investigation against all public officials already facing
administrative charges in connection with the case," Lawyer Bahri
Bayram Belen told reporters here.

"We believe it will not be possible to shed light on this political
assassination if all the blame is put on a few children from poor
families," he added.

The January 19 murder of the editor of the Turkish-Armenian weekly
Agos is the work of a "well-structured organisation… that aims to
prevent democracy from functioning in Turkey," Belen said.

Police have so far arrested 11 suspects in connection with the killing,
including Ogun Samast, an unemployed 17-year-old a high school dropout
who, officials say, has confessed to gunning down Dink, 52, outside
the Agos offices in Istanbul.

Most of the suspects are from the Black Sea city of Trabzon —
a bastion of nationalism — and are believed to be close to
ultranationalist groups who hated Dink for his views on the World
War I killings of Armenians under Ottoman rule.

Dink described the 1915-1918 killings as genocide, a label that Turkey,
the Ottoman Empire’s successor, categorically rejects.

Interior ministry inspectors are currently looking into allegations
that Istanbul police received a tip-off last year about a plot to
kill Dink being organised in Trabzon, but did not follow up.

Showing a copy of a note from Trabzon police informing their colleagues
in Istanbul of a plot to murder Dink, lawyer Fethiye Cetin said 17
similar messages in all had been sent to the Istanbul police.

"These prove that it was not negligence or forgetfulness, but the
conscious participation of the authorities in this crime," she said.

A preliminary investigation has been launched against Istanbul police
chief Celalettin Cerrah and another senior officer on charges that
they failed to act on the intelligence received from Trabzon.

Another investigation is under way against Trabzon’s governor and
police chief, already removed from office amid accusations that they
failed to seriously investigate groups of ultra-nationalist youths
in the city.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress