WITNESS SAW DINK MURDER SUSPECT AT GENDARMERIE COMMAND

Today’s Zaman
07 July 2009, Tuesday

A witness who testified yesterday in the murder trial of Hrant Dink,
a Turkish-Armenian journalist assassinated by an ultra-nationalist
teenager in January 2007, stated that he saw one of the prime suspects
in the case at the Trabzon Gendarmerie Command before the murder.

The Ýstanbul 14th Higher Criminal Court continued hearing evidence in
the Dink murder trial yesterday. Veysel Þahin, who said he was invited
to Trabzon as a "guest intelligence officer," had seen Yasin Hayal at
the Trabzon Gendarmerie Command during his time there between 2003 and
2005. He also recalled asking a colonel named Þinasi and an intelligent
unit chief called Feridun who Hayal was, and the two men responding,
"He is a good kid."

Suspects Ogun Samast, Erhan Tuncel, Yasin Hayal, Ahmet Ýskender and
Ersin Yolcu, as well as Hrant Dink’s wife Rakel, daughter Delal and
brother Orhan Dink, journalist Adalet Aðaoðlu, former head of the
Ýstanbul Bar Association Yucel Sayman, journalists Ali Bayramoðlu,
Oral Calýþlar and Yavuz Baydar and a delegation of lawyers from the
Paris Bar Association attended the trial yesterday.

The court also heard another witness, Mesme Havva, who was at the crime
scene on the day of the assassination. Havva told the court that she
was working at a store not far from the crime scene and said she was
walking to a nearby bank on the day of the murder when she heard a
gunshot which led her to believe that her friend walking next to her
was shot.

She said when she saw that the person who was actually shot was
Hrant Dink, a personal acquaintance as he was a frequenter of
the store where Havva works, that she heard Dink yell out, "I’ve
been shot." The witness said there were two people and continued,
"The second time, they shot his head, he turned around. I asked the
one who pulled the trigger ‘why did you shoot him, son?’ He waited,
perhaps to make sure that he was dead, and then that one ran off."

Havva also said she tried to help Dink up to get him to a hospital
after she was shot, but that people at the scene told her not to
touch Dink’s body until the prosecutors arrived. Havva also said she
testified to the police twice, once before hit-man Ogun Samast was
captured and another time after that, saying she had identified one
of the suspects in the line-up she had been shown by the police.

She said at the time of the shooting, she saw someone standing aside
when Samast was pulling the trigger, and noted that he started to run
together with the hit-man, adding that one of the two ran into a girl
holding a purse, who mistakenly thought they were purse snatchers.

During yesterday’s session, Havva was asked to identify Samast in the
room one more time. She replied, "Yes I think this was him. I can’t
be too sure, his face was all wrapped up because it was winter,"
at which point Samast started to laugh. The witness, agitated by
Samast’s reaction, angrily retorted, "What are you laughing at?" The
presiding judge ordered silence in the courtroom.

Havva also said she had been fired by her boss and her husband had
stopped talking to her because she has been standing as a witness in
the trial.

When asked to identify the second person at the scene she pointed her
finger at Hayal, another one of the primary suspects in the murder
case. Hayal, who spoke after being singled out as the second person
at the crime scene, started his words saying he was sorry about his
earlier aggressive behaviors in the court. He denied the witness’
testimony, saying that the police had established the validity of
his alibi that he was in Trabzon at the time.

Presiding Judge Erkan Canak read out loud an affidavit by witness Mesut
Oz, in which the witness said he had seen Ogun Samast and another man,
who he said was "short and round," stand and watch Dink for a long
time, standing next to a lamppost outside a cafe where Dink and he
were having coffee three or four days before the murder. Oz wrote
that he identified Samast on the television the day of the murder,
but said he did not see the other man on television.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress