Agence France Presse — English
October 11, 2007 Thursday

Turkish court gives suspended jail term to son of assassinated
journalist

A Turkish court on 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 1915-17 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 which 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.