TURKISH SOLDIERS TRIED OVER ETHNIC ARMENIAN’S MURDER: REPORT

Agence France Presse — English
January 22, 2008 Tuesday 2:14 PM GMT

Two Turkish soldiers went on trial Tuesday accused of covering up
intelligence about the plan to murder ethnic Armenian journalist
Hrant Dink months before it occurred, Anatolia news agency reported.

They are the first members of the security forces to stand trial in
the Black Sea city of Trabzon, where the murder was allegedly planned,
amid widespread allegations that some officers condoned the killing
and did not act to prevent it.

The 52-year-old Dink, whom Turkish nationalists hated for calling
the World War I massacres of Armenians genocide, was shot dead
on January 19, 2007, outside the offices of his Agos newspaper in
downtown Istanbul.

The self-confessed gunman, 17-year-old Ogun Samast, alleged mastermind
Yasin Hayal and 17 suspected associates went on trial in Istanbul
last year.

Hayal’s uncle testified Tuesday that he had informed the two defendants
— members of the Trabzon gendarme, a paramilitary force policing
rural areas — that his nephew was planning to kill Dink, and accused
the pair of trying to cover up the tip-off.

"I told them that Yasin Hayal was planning to kill Hrant Dink three or
four months before his murder," Coskun Igci told the judge, adding that
the soldiers also knew that his nephew was looking for a gun to buy.

"Several days after Dink was killed, they came to me and asked me
not to speak to anyone about what we had talked before," he said.

The defendants, who were not present at the hearing and were named
by Anatolia only as O.S. and V.S., risk between six months and two
years in jail for "abuse of power".

Dink’s murder has prompted fresh calls on Ankara to eliminate 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 killed.

Prosecutors say police received intelligence as early as 2006 of a
plot to kill Dink being organised in Trabzon.

In September, two policemen went on trial in the northern city of
Samsun for their role in a scandal that saw security forces pose for
"souvenir" pictures with the gunman after he was captured there a
day after the murder.

Dink had won many hearts in Turkey with his efforts for
Turkish-Armenian reconciliation and more than 100,000 people marched
at his funeral.