DINK’S MURDER TRIAL WILL BE OPENED TO THE MEDIA
Erol Onderoa~^Lu
BIA, Turkey
April 29 2008
In the next hearing on July 7 Dink’s murder suspect O.S. will be 18
and the trial open to the press. An informant-defendant, Ä°gci who
has refrained from testifying, will be assigned a lawyer to be heard
in the next hearing the judge decided.
The fifth hearing of the Armenian writer-journalist Hrant Dink murder
trial is concluded Monday. The court set the next hearing day for
July 7.
While the court decided to maintain the existing status of the arrested
defendants, it denied the request by the Dink’s lawyers to receive
a copy of the visual and audio records of the hearing. The court
agreed to hear more than 10 witnesses from Istanbul and Trabzon,
whose testimonies may help solve the murder, but four of them could
not be reached.
Since he did not have a lawyer, the court could not hear the testimony
of the gendarme informant CoÅ~_kun Ä°gci who, during his trial at the
2. Criminal Court of Peace in Trabzon, had stated that "I informed
the gendarmerie about Yasin Hayal’s murder plans." The court decided
that he be assigned a lawyer from the bar and heard in the next
hearing. Yasin Hayal is indicted with planning Hrant Dink’s murder
and conscripting gunman O.S. for killing the journalist.
Filing a criminal complaint against Hayal’s lawyer Following Hayal’s
lawyer Fuat Turgut’s derogatory remarks of "Yohannes Pamukyan,"
Dink’s lawyers filed a complaint, claiming that these remarks were
meant to target Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel winner Turkish writer, and the
Armenian society in a manner that comes under the crime of provoking
hatred and animosity among people, as defined by the article 216/2
of the penal code.
Dink’s lawyers also demanded that the access and the password to the
computer used in the prison where Hayal stayed after his bombing of
McDonalds in 2004. The lawyers are hoping to determine who visited
Hayal while he was in jail. Fethiye Cetin, one of the lawyers of
the Dink family, said that their demands were not met fully by
BayrampaÅ~_a prison where Hayal had stayed; they were still waiting
for a satisfactory reply.
In the afternoon, the defendants Ä°rfan Ozkan and Numan Å~^iÅ~_man
were questioned. When one of Dink’s lawyers Arzu Becerik asked Ozkan
whether it was true that everyone applauded O.S.’s reply that he
could do the murder during the meeting with a group from Istanbul,
he answered that it was true, but she needed to ask Umit (Oksuz)
who were present in this meeting.
Two police officers were heard about Hayal’s words "Tell Orhan Pamuk
to be smart," in one of his previous appearances. They affirmed that
he said these words.
Cetin made a statement at the end of the hearing Dink Family lawyer
Fethiye Cetin, in apublic statement she made for the media after the
conclusion of the hearing said they were expecting the Istanbul trial
combined with the trial in Trabzon, but "this we will know when we
receive the replies to the petitions we had given to the Ä°stanbul
and Trabzon public prosecutors," she concluded.
Reminded about the claims that the Trabzon Police Department destroyed
some of the evidences Cetin said: "There was already information about
this matter in the file kept in the Trabzon Police Department. We asked
again for this information. Eventually we received the statement that
only the information regarding Mustafa Ozturk, the provincial head
of Trabzon Alperen Ocakları, was destroyed. Regarding Erhan Tuncel,
we communicated our much comprehensive request to the Head of the
Intelligence Office of the Police Department. The reply from this
department would have been studied by the magistracy and presented
to the court, but no result has come from this yet."
The surveillance records and the other evidentiary documents that
will be received from the Trabzon Police Department and the Public
Prosecutor’s Office will help determine those people in the state
who may be related to the murder case. (GG)
–Boundary_(ID_vbCyMkCxpfE5mdoL5Jw7pA)–