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TURKISH COURT SENTENCES SIX MILITARY OFFICIALS TO PRISON IN DINK TRIAL
Hurriyet
June 2 2011
Turkey
Dink was gunned down by a teenager outside his newspaper's Istanbul
office in January 2007.
Six of eight suspects being tried on charges of negligence in
preventing the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink
have been sentenced to prison by a court in the Black Sea province
of Trabzon.
The 2nd Trabzon Criminal Court of Peace handed down prison sentences
of six months each to Trabzon Gendarmerie Commander Col. Ali Oz and
Gendarmerie Intelligence Unit Director Cpt. Metin Y覺ld覺z.
Non-Commissioned Officers, or NCOs, Veysel 癬^ahin, Okan 癬^im癬_ek,
Hac覺 Omer Unal覺r and Huseyin Y覺lmaz were each sentenced to four
months in jail for the same charges. Two other military personnel
were acquitted by the court.
The suspects were accused of assisting the murderers at the time the
plan to assassinate Dink was being hatched.
Retired Lt. Col. Ali Oguz Caglar, a former Trabzon gendarmerie
public security branch director, also confirmed the testimonies of
the two gendarmes.
"Two of our intelligence officers worked hard to obtain for me highly
credible information that the murder was likely to happen, and they
passed the information to the troop commander, Col. Ali Oz, but the
commander, either knowingly or unknowingly, did not proceed with the
procedures he had to go through after obtaining such information,"
he earlier told the court.
Caglar said that upon receiving the intelligence, Oz had said, "Let's
talk about this later," and the matter was not discussed again. People
who attended the briefing where the intelligence was discussed later
debated about "how such information can be disregarded."
Caglar also said that, as the news of Dink's murder was revealed on
television on Jan. 19, 2007, that Oz had told them in the next briefing
that informant Co癬_kun 襤gci should be contacted and silenced.
襤gci, who testified for the first time on July 7, 2008, is the uncle
of Dink murder suspect Yasin Hayal. 襤gci said he tried to prevent
Hayal from murdering Dink but could not, so he informed officials
and gendarmerie officials, who told him that they had already been
monitoring Hayal.
Ogun Samast has confessed to gunning down Dink outside his newspaper's
Istanbul office in January 2007, but the ensuing investigation has
been highly controversial. The investigation made it obvious that the
young man had not acted alone but was in fact driven by a group of
people whom he called "older brothers" and who had plotted to commit
the act for more than a year.
In addition to suspicious links between the suspects and security
institutions, lawyers representing the Dink family at various times
have accused the police of destroying vital evidence and concealing
crucial information from the court and the prosecution.
Dink family lawyers said the Trabzon suspects had had prior knowledge
about a plot to kill Dink since July 2006 but had failed to take the
necessary measures, suggesting that they had personal relations with
the suspects in Dink's murder, the trial for which is continuing at
Istanbul's 14th High Criminal Court.
Hurriyet
June 2 2011
Turkey
Dink was gunned down by a teenager outside his newspaper's Istanbul
office in January 2007.
Six of eight suspects being tried on charges of negligence in
preventing the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink
have been sentenced to prison by a court in the Black Sea province
of Trabzon.
The 2nd Trabzon Criminal Court of Peace handed down prison sentences
of six months each to Trabzon Gendarmerie Commander Col. Ali Oz and
Gendarmerie Intelligence Unit Director Cpt. Metin Y覺ld覺z.
Non-Commissioned Officers, or NCOs, Veysel 癬^ahin, Okan 癬^im癬_ek,
Hac覺 Omer Unal覺r and Huseyin Y覺lmaz were each sentenced to four
months in jail for the same charges. Two other military personnel
were acquitted by the court.
The suspects were accused of assisting the murderers at the time the
plan to assassinate Dink was being hatched.
Retired Lt. Col. Ali Oguz Caglar, a former Trabzon gendarmerie
public security branch director, also confirmed the testimonies of
the two gendarmes.
"Two of our intelligence officers worked hard to obtain for me highly
credible information that the murder was likely to happen, and they
passed the information to the troop commander, Col. Ali Oz, but the
commander, either knowingly or unknowingly, did not proceed with the
procedures he had to go through after obtaining such information,"
he earlier told the court.
Caglar said that upon receiving the intelligence, Oz had said, "Let's
talk about this later," and the matter was not discussed again. People
who attended the briefing where the intelligence was discussed later
debated about "how such information can be disregarded."
Caglar also said that, as the news of Dink's murder was revealed on
television on Jan. 19, 2007, that Oz had told them in the next briefing
that informant Co癬_kun 襤gci should be contacted and silenced.
襤gci, who testified for the first time on July 7, 2008, is the uncle
of Dink murder suspect Yasin Hayal. 襤gci said he tried to prevent
Hayal from murdering Dink but could not, so he informed officials
and gendarmerie officials, who told him that they had already been
monitoring Hayal.
Ogun Samast has confessed to gunning down Dink outside his newspaper's
Istanbul office in January 2007, but the ensuing investigation has
been highly controversial. The investigation made it obvious that the
young man had not acted alone but was in fact driven by a group of
people whom he called "older brothers" and who had plotted to commit
the act for more than a year.
In addition to suspicious links between the suspects and security
institutions, lawyers representing the Dink family at various times
have accused the police of destroying vital evidence and concealing
crucial information from the court and the prosecution.
Dink family lawyers said the Trabzon suspects had had prior knowledge
about a plot to kill Dink since July 2006 but had failed to take the
necessary measures, suggesting that they had personal relations with
the suspects in Dink's murder, the trial for which is continuing at
Istanbul's 14th High Criminal Court.