Agence France Presse — English
February 23, 2007 Friday 4:33 PM GMT
Ninth suspect jailed over murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist
An Istanbul court Friday detained another man over the murder of
Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink last month, bringing to nine
the number arrested over the killing, Anatolia news agency reported.
The court charged university student Veysel Toprak with "aiding and
abetting a criminal organisation" and "protecting a criminal," the
agency said.
Media reports described Toprak as a close friend of one of the most
prominent suspects in the investigation, Yasin Hayal, who allegedly
provided the gunman with money and a pistol to kill Dink.
Hayal reportedly hid in Toprak’s house in Istanbul after bombing a
McDonald’s restaurant in the northern city of Trabzon in 2004, for
which he later served 11 months in jail.
Dink’s suspected assassin, Ogun Samast, a jobless 17-year-old middle
school graduate, has confessed to gunning down the journalist outside
the office of his bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos in downtown
Istanbul on January 19.
Samast, who underwent surgery for appendicitis late Wednesday, was
discharged from hospital under heavy security on Friday and returned
to the prison in Kandira, about 100 kilometres (60 miles) east of
Istanbul.
Prosecutors have yet to complete their indictment on Dink’s murder,
believed to have been committed with ultra-nationalist motives.
Interior ministry inspectors are looking into allegations that police
got a tip-off last year about a plot to kill Dink being organised in
Trabzon, from where most of the suspects come, but did not follow up
on the intelligence.
The 52-year-old Dink, a leading member of Turkey’s tiny Armenian
community, called the mass killings of Armenians under the Ottoman
Empire genocide, a label that Ankara fiercely rejects.
He was given a suspended six-month sentence last year for "insulting
Turkishness" under an infamous penal code article that has served to
prosecute a string of other intellectuals and raised alarms about
freedom of speech in Turkey.