TWO MORE SECURITY OFFICIALS DISMISSED IN FOOTAGE PROBE
Today’s Zaman, Turkey
Feb 6 2007
Two more security force members were removed Monday in an ongoing
investigation into video footage that showed police and gendarmerie
officials posing for souvenir photos with the suspected killer of
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.
A policeman was sacked and a member of the Gendarmerie was transferred
to other duties in Samsun, where the scandal broke out, the Anatolia
news agency said. It said the dismissals were made at the request of
a government inspector but gave no further information. Four policemen
and four gendarmerie officials were similarly dismissed last Friday.
The video footage, leaked to the Turkish media last week, showed
Ogun Samast, 17, posing in front of a Turkish flag with security
officials shortly after his arrest last month on suspicion of killing
the editor Hrant Dink outside his newspaper office in Ýstanbul. Some
of the officials were wearing police uniforms and others were in
gendarmerie uniforms.
The leakage revived fears about the "deep state," a reference to
elements of the state working in collusion with criminal gangs, and
brought to the foreground an apparent rift between the police and
the gendarmerie. The footage was first reported to have been shot at
a gendarmerie station, but the Gendarmerie Command angrily denied
the claim, saying it had been shot at a police station in Samsun,
where Samast had been captured after a nation-wide manhunt.
–Boundary_(ID_bYogKeak6hpEZRvJKlIK+g)–