INTEL HEADS TO BE ASKED ABOUT DINK

Hurriyet
Jan 16 2009
Turkey

ISTANBUL – Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan approved the Prime
Ministry Inspection Report about the murder of Turkish Armenian
journalist Hrant Dink, which has opened the way for an investigation
against two high-ranking police officers.

Ramazan Akyurek, the country’s top police intelligence chief, and
Ali Fuat Yılmazer, Istanbul’s police intelligence chief, may be
investigated for negligence of duty, under allegations that they did
not prevent Dink’s murder although they had intelligence preceding it.

At the time of the murder, Akyurek was police chief of the Black
Sea province of Trabzon, where suspects of Dink’s murder came from,
and Yılmazer was the branch director of the intelligence department
in charge of right-wing terror and minorities in Ankara.

Erdogan approved the report at the beginning of December. The report
is currently with the Interior Ministry for the approval of Minister
BeÅ~_ir Atalay. After Atalay’s approval, it is expected that inspectors
will be allocated to investigate these officials.

The Prime Ministry report was prepared upon the demand of Dink’s family
to determine which officials neglected their duties. The report states
that a preliminary investigation would be appropriate against Akyurek
and Yılmazer, together with other officials still to be determined.

Abatement for Hayal Meanwhile, the prosecutor of another case against
Dink’s murder suspect, Yasin Hayal, over the bombing of a McDonalds’
restaurant in Trabzon in 2004, requested a reduction in Hayal’s
sentence because he had repented.

Hayal was sentenced to six years in prison for the bombing, however,
the Supreme Court of Appeals overruled the decision. Prosecutor Yakup
Unal Demir did not demand a widening of the investigation.

Hayal is one of the main suspects in Dink’s murder and he is alleged
to have planned and incited the murder. Erhan Tuncel, another main
suspect of the murder case is alleged to have organized the McDonalds’
bombing together with Hayal, but was charged by police as an informer
after the bombing.

Dink, the editor in chief of the multilingual weekly Agos, was shot to
death in the central Å~^iÅ~_li district of Istanbul on Jan. 19, 2006.

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