MINISTER URGES PROBE INTO POLICE ROLE IN ARMENIAN JOURNALIST’S MURDER
Agence France Presse — English
January 21, 2008 Monday 9:57 AM GMT
Turkey’s justice minister has called for a "serious" probe into claims
that security forces were involved in the murder last year of ethnic
Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.
"Certain members of the security forces are said to be linked to
this murder," Justice Minister Mehmet Ali Sahin said in an interview
published Monday in the daily Sabah.
"Every allegation must be considered a tip-off and seriously
investigated," he said.
Thousands marked the first anniversary of Dink’s assassination on
Saturday with protestors accusing the authorities of ignoring the
alleged protection the suspected gunman and his associates received
from the police.
"If what they (the police) did was a crime, they must be definitely
punished," the minister said.
Dink’s murder prompted fresh calls for the elimination of the "deep
state" — a term used to describe security forces acting outside the
law to preserve what they consider Turkey’s best interests.
Lawyers for Dink’s family say the police withheld and destroyed
evidence to cover up the murder, including footage from a bank security
camera in downtown Istanbul near where Dink was gunned down on January
19, 2007.
The charge sheet says police received intelligence as early as 2006
of a plot to kill Dink organised in the northern city of Trabzon,
home of self-confessed gunman Ogun Samast, 17, and most of his 18
alleged accomplices currently on trial.
A taped telephone conversation between a policeman and a suspect
shortly after the killing suggests the officer knew of the plot in
advance. The tape, leaked to the media last year, includes degrading
comments about Dink.
Dink, 52, campaigned for reconciliation between Turks and Armenians,
but nationalists hated him for insisting the World War I massacres
of Armenians under Ottoman rule was an act of genocide — a label
Ankara fiercely rejects.
Only four members of the security forces have been indicted in
connection with the murder, but face minor charges unrelated to the
killing itself.
Sahin also said a draft proposal to amend the controversial Article
301 of the Turkish penal code under which Dink was given a suspended
six-month jail sentence for "denigrating Turkishness" would be
submitted to parliament in the coming days.
The law has been criticised as a threat to freedom of speech in Turkey,
which is engaged in membership talks with the European Union.