NO POLICE NEGLIGENCE IN DINK MURDER, REPORT FINDS

Today’s Zaman
Feb 5 2010
Turkey

Nineteen police officers charged with negligence in the investigation
into the assassination of Hrant Dink have been cleared by a report
drafted by Interior Ministry investigators.

The Prime Ministry Inspection Board had requested that the Interior
Ministry investigate 19 police officers working at the Trabzon
Police Station and the National Police Department’s intelligence
unit following the filing of a request by Dink’s wife, Rakel Dink,
who accused the officers of negligence egregious enough to allow the
assassination to take place. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
also requested that the charges be looked into. The Inspection
Board decided that there was a "possibility" that the police —
including former intelligence unit heads Ramazan Akyurek and
Sabri Uzun, former intelligence unit deputy chiefs Necmettin Emre
and Vedat Yavuz and former Trabzon Police Chief ReÅ~_at Altay —
had demonstrated negligence and so requested that the Interior
Ministry investigate. Ministry investigators drafted a report upon
the conclusion of their probe, saying that the 19 officers named were
not criminally negligent in connection to the murder.

The Armenian-Turkish Hrant Dink was editor-in-chief of the bilingual
Agos daily until he was killed on Jan. 19, 2007.

Lawyers representing the co-plaintiffs in the Dink trial have long
alleged that the murder was the doing of Ergenekon, a clandestine
group charged with plotting to overthrow the government. One of
the Dink family lawyers, Deniz Tuna, told Today’s Zaman last month,
before the Interior Ministry’s investigation was concluded: "Security
personnel were informed beforehand about the assassination plot and
did not take steps to stop it. They are being protected by certain
authorities in an attempted cover-up. We are talking about the state’s
security forces: the gendarmerie, police and intelligence agencies."