TURKISH COURT GIVES SUSPENDED JAIL TERM TO ASSASSINATED JOURNO’S SON
AFP
Middle East Times, Egypt
Oct 11 2007
ISTANBUL — A Turkish court Thursday found the son of assassinated
ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink guilty of insulting the Turkish
identity, but spared him jail, Anatolia news agency reported.
Arat Dink and a colleague, Serkis Seropyan, were given a one-year
suspended prison term after reproducing an interview in their newspaper
in which Hrant Dink, who was killed by an ultranationalist youth
in January, said that the massacre of Armenians in 1915 to 1917 in
Ottoman Turkey was a genocide.
The judges at the court in Istanbul ruled that Dink and Seropyan,
respectively the chief editor and a top writer for Agos magazine,
a Turkish-Armenian language review, should not go to prison because
they had no criminal record, Anatolia reported.
The two journalists were charged under article 301 of the Turkish
penal code that calls for the punishment of those who "insult Turkish
national identity," the agency said.
The interview with Hrant Dink was published in July, 2006, when he
was editor of Agos.
Hrant Dink’s comments often outraged Turkish nationalists, and he was
also found guilty of insulting Turkish identity and given a six-month
suspended jail term. He was gunned down outside the magazine’s offices
in January.
A teenager who has confessed to the murder and a number of alleged
accomplices went on trial in July.