DINK’S LAWYERS DEMAND MORE INVESTIGATIONS

Hurriyet
Feb 9 2010
Turkey

Murdered Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink’s lawyers at Monday’s
trial petitioned the court to investigate all public institutions
and officials as well as other people and organizations that were
negligent or guilty in Dink’s murder.

Dink was murdered on Jan. 19, 2007 in front of the bilingual daily
Agos in broad daylight.

The petitions, signed by the lawyers, first asked to start an
investigation into the National Intelligence Organization, or MÄ°T,
the Istanbul Police Department, the Trabzon Police Department, the
Trabzon Gendarmerie Command, the Central Police Intelligence Unit,
and the officials in these institutions who did not take precautions
to protect Dink’s life.

The lawyers also asked the court to find the people who targeted
Dink when he was alive. Also, those who organized attacks on Dink’s
lawyers should be rooted out, said the lawyers.

"Those who hid and damaged evidence or published false documents with
the purpose of manipulation and hiding the real perpetrators should
be searched for," said the lawyers. A security camera belonging to
a private bank in Turkey showed the suspect, Ogun Samast, running
away a few minutes after Dink’s murder. However, camera footage was
cleaned in the aftermath of the murder, and the lawyers have requested
to find those responsible.

The lawyers asked whether Dink’s murder was planned as part of the
Kafes (Cage) Operation Action Plan, an alleged plan including terror
actions against non-Muslims in Turkey.

Meanwhile, in his Tuesday column in daily Hurriyet, Eyup Can claimed a
critical document in the Dink case might be faulty. The Trabzon Police
Department’s intelligence unit said they informed the Istanbul Police
that Yasin Hayal, an arrested suspect in the Dink case, was planning
an action in Istanbul before Dink’s murder and that he would stay at
his brother, Osman Hayal’s, place in Istanbul’s Osmangazi township.

"Fethiye Cetin, a lawyer for the Dink family, says there are two
documents with the same date and signed by the same officers, Yusuf
Kartal and Fadıl Erkin, which is a suspicious situation," wrote Can.

The officers were seen both checking Osman Hayal’s place in Sarıgazi
in one document and as working in Fatih from morning to night on the
same day according to another document. "As one person cannot be in two
places at the same time, one of these documents is faulty," wrote Can.

The document saying the officers were in Fatih was correctly written
in the terms of style and content, however, the one showing them in
Sarıgazi has problems, said Cetin to Can. "Ahmet İlhan, head of the
intelligence unit in Istanbul at that time, said the police officers
can go from one post to another in the same day, and he added that
personally he believes the police officers actually searched Osman
Hayal’s place," said Can.

Meanwhile, Erhan Tuncel, a suspect in the Dink case and a former
police informant in Trabzon, has applied for the tests to become a
corrections officer although he was arrested, reported CNNTurk news
Web site on Monday. He took the test on Feb. 2 but failed the exam
because he could not satisfy the physical criteria.