‘KEY SUSPECT IN DINK MURDER CASE HAS CRIMINAL LIABILITY’
Today’s Zaman
Nov 14 2011
Turkey
Yasin Hayal, one of the key suspects in the 2007 murder case of
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, has criminal liability,
a report issued by the Council of Forensic Medicine (ATK) has revealed.
The findings of the ATK report were shared by the presiding judge,
Rustem Eryılmaz, at the 21st hearing of the Dink trial at the
Ä°stanbul 14th High Criminal Court on Monday.
In July, the court demanded a psychiatric report for Hayal in the
Dink assassination case.
Eryılmaz said the report from the ATK reached the court and showed
that “Yasin Hayal legally has criminal liability as a person.”
Hayal is accused of having acted with Erhan Tuncel, a former police
informant, in masterminding the Dink murder. Among other key suspects
is Ogun Samast, the ultranationalist teenager who gunned Dink down
outside his office in January 2007. He was tried at the Ä°stanbul 2nd
Juvenile Court since he was a minor at the time of the murder. Samast
was sentenced to 22 years and 10 months in prison by the court earlier
this year.
The investigation into Dink’s murder stalled when the perpetrator
and his accomplices were put on trial, but those who masterminded
the plot to kill him have yet to be exposed and punished.
At Monday’s hearing, prosecutor Hikmet Usta reiterated his opinion
he stated at the 20th hearing of the case as to who masterminded the
assassination and said the murder was the work of Ergenekon’s Trabzon
cell and demanded life imprisonment for seven suspects, including
key suspects Hayal and Tuncel, on charges of attempting to destroy
the constitutional order.
Usta said nobody should be overwhelmed by hopelessness regarding the
settlement of the Dink murder case.
“We need to trust our state. We cannot declare our state as the enemy.
We need to seek for rights through legal ways. I think the victim of
this case would also think so. The truth can never be obscured. The
mysteries surrounding this case will be cleared. Nobody should have
doubts about this,” Usta said.
Meanwhile, one of the co-plaintiff lawyers in the case, Esra
Salmanlı, demanded that Telecommunications Directorate (TİB) keep
phone conversations made at the time of the murder the scene of the
murder of Dink.
Given the fact that TÄ°B deletes recordings of telephone conversations
of people every five year, she said the recordings related to the
Dink murder case will be deleted in 64 days.
Salmanlı asked to court to take action to prevent TİB from deleting
these recordings.
Fethiye Cetin, the lawyer of the Dink family, also complained that
TÄ°B hides recordings of the Dink murder day from everyone, preventing
the identification of the masterminds of the murder.
In August, TÄ°B submitted a report to the court, saying that it would
not release the telephone recordings because that would “interfere
in their [the people heard in those conversations] private lives.”
There were a group of around 200 protestors in front of the Ä°stanbul
courthouse in BeÅ~_iktaÅ~_ before the start of the hearing on Monday.
Calling themselves “friends of Hrant,” the protestors condemned
the slow progress in the Dink murder case and accused the court of
carrying out a shoddy trial.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
