DINK LAWYERS REQUEST MERGER OF CASES FROM TRABZON AND ISTANBUL COURTS

Today’s Zaman
April 15 2008
Turkey

The lawyers of slain Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink have
asked that the trials of gendarme officials who are suspected of
having prior knowledge of the journalist’s assassination continue in
an Istanbul court instead of Trabzon.

Dink was shot dead in broad daylight outside the office of his
newspaper, Agos, in Istanbul on Jan. 19, 2007 by a nationalist
teenager. The ensuing investigation revealed that a group of
ultra-nationalist young men were behind the murder. Strong evidence
has suggested that some members of the group had ties to the police
department in Trabzon, the hometown of the plotters. Security officials
later confirmed that they had been tipped off about the plot to kill
Dink before the murder was committed.

In the most recent development, two noncommissioned gendarmerie
officers testified in court that they had been informed about the
plot, adding that they had in turn informed their superiors, who
ordered them to keep silent.

Lawyers for the Dink family, Fethiye Cetin, Bahri Bayram Belen
and Ergin Cinmen, submitted an 18-page petition to the Istanbul
Prosecutor’s Office in Istanbul’s Beþiktaþ district yesterday in
which they demanded a merger of the cases related to the assassination
currently in progress in Trabzon and Istanbul.

Speaking to reporters after submitting the petition, Cinmen said that
it was necessary for the case at the Trabzon Court of Peace to be
merged with the case that is in progress at the Istanbul 14th High
Criminal Court, where the masterminds of the Dink murder are being
tried. "We think that if the Dink trial is not conducted with the
inclusion of the trial of gendarmes at a Trabzon court into this case,
no matter what ruling is made, it will be far from fulfilling the law
and satisfying our conscience. Turkey will live with this murder. This
will last for years. It will remain a question mark on the conscience
of the people. We conveyed our request [for the merger of the cases]
both here and at the Trabzon Prosecutor’s Office," Cinmen said.

In the petition, the lawyers claimed that the suspects had prior
knowledge about a plot to kill Dink since July 2006 and failed to take
the necessary measures, suggesting that they had personal relations
with the suspects of Dink’s murder whose trial continue at Istanbul’s
14th High Criminal Court.

"If the suspects had fulfilled their duty as required, Dink would be
alive today," they said in the petition, asking that the suspects
be tried for causing a death through negligence. The lawyers also
argued that the suspects prepared falsified documents to help the
organization that planned Dink’s assassination and that they should
therefore be tried under Article 314 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK),
which deals with armed crime organizations.

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