NEW DINK MURDER TRIAL PROMPTS RENEWED CALLS FOR JUSTICE

Southeast European Times
Feb 13 2008
MD

Turkey must ensure that all those behind the assassination journalist
Hrant Dink are brought to justice to avoid damage to its image within
the EU, a European lawmaker said Tuesday.

(Zaman – 13/02/08; BBC, Turkish Press, Bianet, Reporters Without
Borders – 12/02/08)

The Turkish authorities were criticised Tuesday (February 12th) for
failing to act on demands for a full-blown investigation into the
assassination of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink to ensure
that all involved in the plot will face justice.

A day after the third hearing in the case against 19 people charged in
the murder of the founder and editor of the Istanbul-based bilingual
Turkish-Armenian weekly, Agos, observers appeared increasingly
sceptical that the whole truth will ever be established.

"We reiterate our support for all who are calling for the judicial
system to do its job in this case," the Paris-based media watchdog
Reporters Without Borders said in a statement on Tuesday. "We regret
that the conditions are not in place for the truth to emerge~E
In these circumstances, we doubt that the judges will manage to
establish once and for all the responsibility and guilt of the
different protagonists."

Dink, 53, was gunned down on January 19th 2007 outside his newspaper’s
offices. In July 2006, he was given a six-month suspended sentence
after being convicted on charges of "denigrating Turkishness" because
of an article in which he described the killings of an estimated 1.5
million Armenians during World War I as "genocide".

A hardline nationalist from the Black Sea city of Trabzon, Ogun Samast
— the primary suspect in the case ~V has confessed to the murder,
citing Dink’s statements on the Armenian issue as his motive.

The other defendants include Yasin Hayal and Erhan Tuncel, a police
informer.

Reports following the journalist’s murder indicated that the police
had received more than one tip-off about the assassination, but had
failed to take any action to prevent it. Dink family lawyers have also
repeatedly claimed that there has been destruction of evidence and
that the authorities have refused to probe the suspected involvement
of members of the country’s security forces in the plot.

"The trial cannot proceed in a healthy manner because documents
containing information on more than 6,000 telephone calls made by
some of the defendants have been destroyed by security officials in
Trabzon," Lawyer Erdal Dogan said.

Dutch member of the European Parliament and co-chair of the Turkey-EU
Joint Parliamentary Commission Joost Lagendijk attended the court
hearing. He criticised the Turkish government for failing to act on
its promise for a proper investigation into the case to reveal all
who were involved in it.

"It’s clear that police officers and security services knew about
these plans, but they didn’t act," he told the BBC. "Or some of them
were probably actively involved in the planning. All of these things
should be dealt with in this court case, and if it doesn’t happen,
it will leave a very dirty stain on Turkey’s image."

This content was commissioned for SETimes.com

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress