Police investigate images of journalist’s alleged killer
Agencies
Friday February 2, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
The publication of grainy "souvenir" images showing the alleged
murderer of an ethnic Armenian journalist posing with police officers
sparked outrage in Turkey today.
The pictures show Ogun Samast, charged with killing the prominent
journalist Hrant Dink, flanked by officers and holding the Turkish
flag.
Another Turkish flag in the background carries a quote by Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, which reads: "The
nation’s land is sacred. It cannot be left to fate."
Dink was shot outside the offices of his newspaper in Istanbul last
month. The ethnic Armenian angered Turkish nationalists with repeated
assertions that the mass killings of Armenians around the time of
World War I had been genocide.
Mr Samast was arrested days later after his father saw CCTV images
issued by police. Prosecutors say the 17-year-old has confessed to the
killing.
The emergence of the images sparked a furious response in the Turkish
media.
"Shoulder to shoulder with the triggerman: suspected killer Samast was
given the hero treatment," the Sabah daily newspaper reported on its
front page.
Ismail Caliskan, a police spokesman, said the officers in the images
were being investigated, as were those who leaked them to the media.
More than 100,000 people marched at Dink’s funeral, many of them
chanting for Turkey to abolish a repressive article in the penal code
used against many intellectuals including Dink, who spoke openly on
controversial topics.
Last year, the journalist was given a suspended six-month sentence for
insulting "Turkishness".