Investigation into murder of Dink flawed, lawyer says

armradio.am
30.06.2007 13:55

The investigation into the murder of an ethnic Armenian journalist was
flawed because of a lack of transparency, a lawyer said Friday, ahead
of the trial next week of suspects in the Jan. 19 killing.

Hrant Dink, a free speech advocate whose comments about the mass
killings of Armenians in Turkey early in the last century had
infuriated hardline nationalists, was gunned down outside his office in
Istanbul. Police quickly arrested the alleged teenage shooter and
accomplices, though critics accused authorities of ignoring reports of
a plot to kill Dink.

Fethiye Ã?etin, a lawyer for Dink’s family, said the gang that carried
out the killing was well organized. She criticized authorities for what
she said was a failure to solicit enough information from friends and
relatives of Dink. "The investigation was carried out under a secrecy
order, and this has effectively prevented us from contributing to the
process of arriving at the concrete facts and has led to major flaws in
the investigation," Ã?etin said, the Turkish Daily News reports.

The trial of the 18 defendants starts on Monday.