SUSPECTS IN DINK DEATH ACKNOWLEDGE MURDER WEAPON

Hurriyet Daily News
Monday, October 12, 2009

Two suspects accused of conspiring to murder Turkish-Armenian
journalist Hrant Dink acknowledged that the gun presented before them
during the 11th trial of the case on Monday was the weapon used in
the murder, news agencies reported.

The gun used to kill Dink was brought to the courtroom while the
culprits were removed from the courtroom one by one so that they
could be shown the gun.

"I was going to kill a man. I was not going to a wedding ceremony,"
said Ogun Samast, the confessed murderer of Dink, when he saw the
gun. Later he took the gun and looked at it. Samast said the gun
he used in the murder had had a problem in its safety lock and that
the gun he was holding in the courthouse had a similar problem. "It
was this gun," he said, according to the Anatolia news agency. Yasin
Hayal, who is a suspected co-conspirator, also said, "I acknowledge
100 percent that this is the gun."

Meanwhile, the attorneys for Dink’s family demanded the court bring the
files of two other important ongoing cases they alleged to be connected
to the Dink case. The first file is for the Ergenekon gang, a group
currently on trial for allegedly plotting to topple the government by
creating turmoil in society. The second file, meanwhile, concerns the
Zirve publishing house case, in which three missionaries were killed
in the southeastern city of Malatya.

Fethiye Cetin, the attorney for the Dink family, said that in a report
commissioned by Parliament’s human rights body about the murder,
Ramazan Akyurek, the intelligence chief of the Black Sea province of
Trabzon at the time of the murder, had said that he left Trabzon on
May 8, 2006, and began work in Ankara on May 9, 2006. According to
him, Dink was murdered because of national sensitivities; he said he
already had the intelligence about the murder from intelligence units.

Cetin alleged that public authoriti nk’s murder at every stage. Cetin
also said it is evident that missionaries, Christians, Jews, Kurds
and Alevis were targeted, according to the briefings Ergenekon case
suspect Sevgi Erenerol gave to the General Staff in 2006.