GENDARMERIE KNEW ABOUT DINK MURDER PLOT, WITNESS TESTIFIES

Today’s Zaman
Jan 23 2008
Turkey

A witness has testified that at least two members of the gendarmerie
force in Trabzon had been clearly warned beforehand of the killing
of Hrant Dink last year.

The trial of two gendarmerie officers on charges of dereliction
of duty by failing to undertake necessary measures to prevent the
murder of ethnic Armenian journalist Dink started in a Trabzon court
on Monday. Gendarmerie intelligence officers Sgt. Maj. Okan Þ. and Spc.

Sgt. Veysel Þahin are being accused of failing to act within the scope
of their powers to prevent the murder of Dink, even though they had
solid intelligence on the plot to assassinate the journalist months
before the incident.

Dink was shot by an extremist teenager on Jan. 19, 2007, outside the
Agos weekly building, where he was the editor-in-chief, in Ýstanbul’s
Beyoðlu district. The ensuing investigation revealed that some of
the suspects who were later found to be the masterminds of the murder
had links to police officers.

The first witness to testify in yesterday’s trial was Coþkun Ýðci,
the ex-husband of the aunt of Yasin Hayal, a prime suspect in the
Dink murder investigation. Ýðci testified that he had notified the
two gendarmerie officers at least two-and-a-half months ahead of the
murder of his nephew’s plans to shoot Dink.

The witness said Hayal, who is currently in prison pending trial in
the Dink murder, had told him openly about his plans for the murder.

Ýðci stated that he informed the two gendarmerie officers of the
plans to kill Dink about two-and-a-half to three months prior to the
murder. He testified that Hayal and his friends told him about an
earlier visit near Dink’s house and the environs of the Agos weekly
in Ýstanbul, which he relayed to the two gendarmerie officers now
being tried. He said the two officers warned him not to talk to anyone
about what he knew shortly after the assassination.

"When I heard from Yasin Hayal that Hrant Dink was going to be
killed I conveyed the information to friends in the gendarmerie
about two-and-a-half to three months before the murder. I knew that
both of the suspects were with the Trabzon gendarmerie intelligence
unit. I did not see them for a while after tipping them off. The day
after the murder, these two friends came to see me and they said they
would like to talk to me. We met in Deðirmendere. They asked me not
to mention that I knew about the plot and that I had told them of the
murder plans. We met again one day after that. They repeated the same
things from the day before and demanded that I not talk to anyone
about the incident and not share any information," Ýðci testified.

Ýðci said he had known both of the gendarmerie officers being tried
since 2004. He noted that he had known Þahin as "Engin abi" and
did not know the name of Okan Þ., referring to him only as "abi,"
a Turkish word meaning older brother. Investigators of the Dink
murder have also found that the group of ultranationalist youths who
plotted the murder was organized in a similar hierarchy of "abi" and
"buyuk abi," or brothers and big brothers.

‘He spoke to me of the murder plan very clearly’

Ýðci testified about Hayal, stating: "He came to me and said, ‘In
Ýstanbul there is a journalist of Armenian origin. He runs a weekly
newspaper called Agos. He writes articles in this newspaper and on
the Internet that are insulting. We will kill this one.’ And I asked:
‘How are you going to kill him? Do you have money or guns?’ Then he
told me they were going to travel to Ýstanbul and kill him and that
they had made a blueprint of the area of his home and office. He also
said he was not alone in this, but he did not tell me who these other
people were."

The witness said Hayal had YTL 300 and offered him the money to find
him a gun.

"And I told these two friends on trial about this gun issue. The
gendarmerie officers asked me to take Hayal’s YTL 300. The money was
in 50 lira bills. I had written down the serial numbers of the bills.

Later I asked the suspects what I should do with the money. They
asked me to keep the money for a while. Yasin Hayal was calling me
continuously asking me what I did with the money and if I had gotten
him the gun yet. The officers were asking me to engage with him some
more. Finally Yasin said: ‘You took my money and spent it. Give me
my money back or give me the gun.’ So I explained the situation to
the suspects here. They asked me to give the money back and so I did."

In response to a question on whether he had contacted any public
officials other than the two suspects, the witness said he had not.

Lawyers demand merging of case files

Meanwhile, Ergin Cinmen, an attorney for the co-plaintiffs, requested
that the court rule the case outside its jurisdiction under Article
83 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK), which defines dereliction of duty
by public officials as failing to take necessary measures despite
having knowledge of what is being planned. He argued this was not a
simple dereliction of duty case but a major offense.

Cinmen said the offense falls under the jurisdiction of a higher
criminal court and that it is outside the jurisdiction of the Trabzon
2nd Peace Criminal Court. He requested that the case be merged with
the murder trial of Dink in Ýstanbul because the Dink murder is an
"equation with too many unknown variables."

–Boundary_(ID_nu80/Lf8pKczW1HZg FNbtw)–