SECURITY FORCES DID NOT PROTECT DINK, FORMER TOP POLICEMAN SAYS

Hurriyet Daily News
April 15 2010
Turkey

Too little security protection was given to assassinated journalist
Hrant Dink in the lead-up to his death, one of the country’s former
top policemen said during a Thursday court hearing.

"Suspect Erhan Tuncel [a former police informant] was removed from
his duty in November 2006. I think the Intelligence Department should
have been made to take an urgent position in line with my circular
note and taken a decision to protect [Dink]," said Sabri Uzun, the
former chief of Central Police Intelligence Unit.

Uzun was testifying as a witness in the hearing of a case against
a daily Milliyet reporter who has been indicted because of a book
he wrote about the murder of Dink, a Turkish journalist of Armenian
origin, news agencies reported Thursday.

The head of the police intelligence at the time of Dink’s murder, Uzun
said necessary measures were not taken despite his circular note sent
to provincial intelligence units that said Dink was a potential target.

Tuncel is among the main suspects of Dink murder and was a police
informant during the time when the murder of Dink was being planned.

Dink was a prominent journalist and the editor in chief of the
multi-lingual weekly Agos. In January 2007, he was shot and killed
in front of his newspaper’s office in Istanbul’s central Å~^iÅ~_li
district.