Agence France Presse — English
June 30, 2007 Saturday 3:03 AM GMT

Turkish-Armenian journalist Dink’s murder trial opens Monday

by Nicolas Cheviron

The trial of 18 people charged with involvement in the murder of
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink opens behind closed doors here
Monday, with his lawyers complaining that several security officials
they say should also be tried are not among the accused.

The central figure of the trial is trigger man Ogun Samast, who has
admitted to killing Dink by shooting him twice in the head and once
in the neck on a busy Istanbul street on January 19, in front of the
offices of his bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos.

The unemployed 17-year-old Samast, who said he came to Istanbul to
kill Dink from his native Trabzon, where he was known for his close
ties to ultranationalist circles, faces 18 to 24 years in jail for
the murder and a further 8-1/2 to 18 years for belonging to a
terrorist organisation.

The prosecution did not seek life because Samast is minor, which is
also why the trial is closed to the public.

Two men accused of being the leaders of the far-right group and
ordering the murder, Yasin Hayal and Erhan Tuncel, could be jailed
for life without the possibility of parole if found guilty.

The 15 others on trial face jail sentences of seven-and-a-half to 35
years.

Before being arrested for the Dink murder, Hayal had already served
jail time for the 2004 bombing in Trabzon of a McDonalds restaurant
in which six people were injured.

He faces a separate trial for having threatened Turkey’s 2006 Nobel
Literature laureate Orhan Pamuk, whose views on the World War I
massacres of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire are unpopular in
Turkey.

Notable for their absence in the dock, according to Dink family
lawyer Fethiye Cetin, are several unnamed security officials.

"Members of the security forces in Trabzon, where the killing was
planned, in Istanbul, where it was executed, and in Ankara, where the
intelligence was gathered, were not included among the accused," she
told a news conference Friday.

"And this despite the established fact that they had links with the
suspects, failed in their duty, concealed evidence and even sought to
vindicate the murder and the murderer," she said.

"Hrant Dink’s murder trial is a critical test of the Turkish
judiciary’s independence," the international rights organisation
Human Rights Watch said in a statement Friday.

"The Turkish judiciary must hold accountable any security forces
responsible for negligence or collusion in the murder," it said.

Dink, 52, had drawn the ire of the Turkish far right for having
openly argued that the mass killings of Armenians in the dying days
of the Ottoman Empire between 1915 and 1917 constituted genocide — a
label most Turks despise and Turkey officially rejects.

The murder sent the country into prolonged shock, and more than
100,000 people from all walks of life took to the streets of Istanbul
on the day of Dink’s funeral, chanting "We are all Hrant Dink" and
"We are all Armenians."

Dink’s friends and followers said they plan to hold a rally in his
memory near the courthouse where his murder trial opens on Monday.