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    Emil Lazarian
  • 6 years ago
    • Categories: 2019

Prosecutors appeal the release of Dink murder suspects

Panorama, Armenia

Turkish prosecutors on Thursday appealed a court order for the release of suspects in the 2007 murder of Hrant Dink, a prominent Armenian-Turkish journalist, local sources reported. To remind, early Thursday, an Istanbul High Criminal Court ordered the conditional release of two suspects in the murder.

Ercan Gun and Muharrem Demirkale were released with a travel ban abroad, while the court ordered the continued detention of Ramazan Akyurek and Ali Fuat Yilmazer. They are all charged with premeditated murder and attempting to overthrow the constitutional order.

Dink, the editor-in-chief of the Istanbul-based Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, was shot dead at the age of 52 in broad daylight by an ultranationalist outside his office in central Istanbul on January 19, 2007. In 2011, Ogun Samast was sentenced to 23 years in prison for the killing. Samast, who was 17 years old in early 2007, claimed he killed Dink for “insulting Turkishness.”

Although Samast is the only person to be jailed for the murder, speculation on the involvement of others has persisted.

Emil Lazarian: “I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.” - WS