TURKISH MPS’ COMMITTEE TO HEAR MURDER CASE GENDARMERIE OFFICERS

Anatolia News Agency
April 17 2008
Turkey

Ankara, 17 April: Head of a human rights committee of the Turkish
parliament said on Thursday [17 April] that the committee would soon
hear a number of gendarmerie officers over a case on the killing of
Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

"In the coming days, these gendarmerie officers will gather with the
committee and we will hear them," Zafer Uskul, chairman, said.

Dink was shot dead outside the offices of his Agos newspaper in
Istanbul in January 2007. Police arrested the gunman and a suspected
associate who was identified as Yasin Hayal.

Acting on the testimonies of two gendarmerie officers who were arrested
on the charges of "neglect of duty", a court in the Black Sea province
of Trabzon ordered a probe against 10 other gendarmerie officers,
including a colonel.

Lawyers of Dink’s family have said in a petition that the "probed
gendarmerie officers had known that Hayal and his friends had been
making plans to kill Dink as early as July 2006 but they had failed
to take necessary measures in an open neglect of duty".