Hunted killer seized on bus after his father turns him in
Suna Erdem in Istanbul
The Times/UK
January 22, 2007
A school dropout has confessed to murdering Hrant Dink, a prominent
Turkish-Armenian journalist.
Ogun Samast, 17, who was caught while asleep on a bus to Turkey’s
eastern border, said that he wanted to kill Mr Dink after reading his
work. `I read on the internet that he said, `I am from Turkey but
Turkish blood is dirty’, and I decided to kill him. I have no
regrets,’ he was quoted as telling police.
Mr Dink, who was shot dead on Friday outside his office in central
Istanbul, had been controversially convicted of `insulting Turkish
identity’ in his writings.
Mr Samast was named as a suspect in the killing after his father
recognised him in video footage of the crime that police aired on
television.
A bus company worker noticed Mr Samast’s name on the passenger list
for a bus destined for Turkey’s border with Russia. The driver,
alerted by mobile telephone, told his steward to check the passenger
in seat 21. When the face seemed to fit, he turned into a bus station
in the city of Samsun, where police were waiting.
Police said that Mr Samast confessed immediately. Six other suspects
are also being questioned. Many Turkish commentators believe that the
teenager is no more than a hitman for a state-backed nationalist
grouping. `They got a child to shoot Dink,’ said the liberal Radikal
daily.
Mr Samast played briefly for a football side in Trabzon and spent most
of his time in internet cafés. Newspapers say that he was
linked to a local nationalist organisation. One of his alleged
accomplices had been jailed for bombing a branch of McDonald’s in
Trabzon.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Prime Minister, hailed the arrest `in the
name of democracy and the struggle for freedom’. He said that the
police would also look into any possible links between this
assassination and the murder of a priest in Trabzon last year, for
which another teenager has been jailed.
Mr Dink, the editor of Agos, a Turkish-Armenian newspaper, was the
highest-profile figure to be convicted under Turkey’s controversial
Article 301 of the penal code, which the European Union wants
changed. He was criticised by right-wing Turks for describing the mass
killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks as genocide.
