People's Daily, China
June 3 2011
Military officers sentenced to jail over journalist death in Turkey
09:06, June 03, 2011
Six Turkish military officers were sentenced to months in jail on
Thursday for failing to prevent the murder of Hrant Dink, a famous
Turkish-Armenian journalist, in 2007, local media reported.
A total of eight suspects stood trial over the case in a court in
north Turkey's Trabzon province, with Colonel Ali Oz, then Trabzon's
provincial gendarmerie commander, and Captain Metin Yildiz, chief of
intelligence unit of the provincial gendarmerie command, sentenced to
six months in jail for misconduct in the case, the Anatolia news
agency reported.
Four other gendarmerie officers were given four months of
imprisonment, while the other two were acquitted, the report said.
Dink, editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos,
was shot dead outside the newspaper's offices in Istanbul's Sisli
neighborhood on Jan. 19, 2007.
Before the killing, Dink had been convicted of insulting Turkey 's
identity over his comments on the alleged Armenian genocide by Ottoman
Turks during World War I and received a six-month suspended sentence.
He had also received threat from nationalists who considered him as a
traitor.
Police arrested the gunman Ogun Samast a day after the murder and a
suspected instigator identified as Yasin Hayal. Both the two men and
another suspected instigator Erhan Tuncel were residents of Trabzon,
according to Anatolia.
Turkey denies the genocide charge and insists the Armenians were
victims of widespread chaos and governmental breakdown as the
600-year-old Ottoman Empire collapsed before modern Turkey was born in
1923.
Source: Xinhua
June 3 2011
Military officers sentenced to jail over journalist death in Turkey
09:06, June 03, 2011
Six Turkish military officers were sentenced to months in jail on
Thursday for failing to prevent the murder of Hrant Dink, a famous
Turkish-Armenian journalist, in 2007, local media reported.
A total of eight suspects stood trial over the case in a court in
north Turkey's Trabzon province, with Colonel Ali Oz, then Trabzon's
provincial gendarmerie commander, and Captain Metin Yildiz, chief of
intelligence unit of the provincial gendarmerie command, sentenced to
six months in jail for misconduct in the case, the Anatolia news
agency reported.
Four other gendarmerie officers were given four months of
imprisonment, while the other two were acquitted, the report said.
Dink, editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos,
was shot dead outside the newspaper's offices in Istanbul's Sisli
neighborhood on Jan. 19, 2007.
Before the killing, Dink had been convicted of insulting Turkey 's
identity over his comments on the alleged Armenian genocide by Ottoman
Turks during World War I and received a six-month suspended sentence.
He had also received threat from nationalists who considered him as a
traitor.
Police arrested the gunman Ogun Samast a day after the murder and a
suspected instigator identified as Yasin Hayal. Both the two men and
another suspected instigator Erhan Tuncel were residents of Trabzon,
according to Anatolia.
Turkey denies the genocide charge and insists the Armenians were
victims of widespread chaos and governmental breakdown as the
600-year-old Ottoman Empire collapsed before modern Turkey was born in
1923.
Source: Xinhua