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ISTANBUL: Crime Of Negligence

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  • ISTANBUL: Crime Of Negligence

    CRIME OF NEGLIGENCE

    Today's Zaman
    Feb 21 2012
    Turkey

    A report prepared by the State Audit Institution (DDK) regarding the
    murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink has revealed that
    mistakes were made in the investigation of public officials who were
    suspected to have acted negligently in preventing the murder. Dink,
    the late editor-in-chief of Agos, was shot dead by an ultranationalist
    teenager outside the office of his Ä°stanbul-based newspaper in broad
    daylight on Jan. 19, 2007.

    The investigation into his murder stalled when the suspected
    perpetrator and his accomplices were put on trial whereas those who
    masterminded the plot to kill him have yet to be exposed and punished.

    In the face of growing calls from the public, Gul ordered the DDK to
    investigate the Dink murder in 2011.

    Noting that the DDK report presents significant clues and makes crucial
    assessments on clarifying the murder, Radikal's Oral CalıÅ~_lar
    says the summary of the DDK report made mention of the method adopted
    during the investigation of public officials. This method supposedly
    led to the failure of not investigating all allegations regarding
    public officials as a whole. The report noted that as a result of
    this failure, the seriousness of the actions by public officials in
    the run up to the murder has not been understood.

    However, CalıÅ~_lar notes that it was not only public officials
    who had been negligent. The prosecutors, too, were negligent by not
    interrogating the Trabzon Gendarmerie Command, the head of the Trabzon
    Police Department and the head of the Ä°stanbul Police Department. They
    were all allegedly informed about the murder beforehand, yet they
    did not take the necessary measures, such as protecting Dink. There
    was also negligence on the part of the state bureaucrats because
    they allegedly said there was no relation between the murder and
    a terrorist organization -- namely Ergenekon. Finally, the people's
    negligence constituted remaining silent when Dink was verbally attacked
    for expressing his opinion when he was still alive. In other words,
    CalıÅ~_lar says the perpetrator of the murder is obviously the
    Ergenekon organization; but negligence, specifically deliberate
    negligence, is a crime as well and, hence, we are all implicated in
    this crime, he says.

    Describing the Dink case as "a course that the students at police
    academies should take to learn how not to deal with a murder case,"
    Yeni Å~^afak's Abdulkadir Selvi says the worst article is an article
    in which the writer repeats the things he wrote in the previous one.

    Selvi, however, says he feels like he has no choice because it
    always boils down to the same issue in the Dink case: Everyone knows
    everything about why and who conducted this murder. Yet, we are
    disappointed to see that the judiciary fails to see or accept these
    facts that everyone else knows about, he says. However, the DDK report
    gave Selvi the hope that the law will finally function and that --
    though it may take a long time -- justice can actually be served in
    the Dink case.




    From: A. Papazian
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