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SUSPECT GETS LIFE IN DINK MURDER CASE, COURT SEES NO 'DEEP STATE' ROLE
Today's Zaman
http://www.todayszaman.com/news-268795-suspect-gets-life-in-dink-murder-case-court-sees-no-deep-state-role.html
Jan 17 2012
Turkey
A Turkish court has handed down life imprisonment for Yasin Hayal,
a major suspect in the killing of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant
Dink, of instigating a murder while another suspect Erhan Tuncel was
acquitted of murder charges.
The Ä°stanbul 14th High Criminal Court issued its ruling in the
25th hearing of the case, ending a five-year trial. The two, and all
other suspects, were cleared of charges of membership in a terrorist
organization. Tuncel was given 10 years and six months for an unrelated
McDonalds bombing in 2004.
The late editor-in-chief of the Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, Dink
was shot dead on Jan. 19, 2007 by an ultranationalist teenager outside
the offices of his newspaper in Ä°stanbul in broad daylight. Evidence
discovered since then has led to claims that the murder was linked to
the "deep state," a term used in reference to a shady group of military
and civilian bureaucrats believed to have links with criminal elements.
Tuncel, one of the key suspects in the murder who was previously a
police informant, had his final defense statement at the hearing.
Tuncel, who was accused of being an instigator of the murder, said
that the murder was an action of Ergenekon, a clandestine organization
whose alleged members are currently standing trial in court cases on
charges of plotting against the government.
In 1999, lawyers in the trial over the murder of Dink had demanded that
the court request documents seized during the Ergenekon probe relating
to the organization's Cage Action Plan against minorities in Turkey.
The lawyers had stated at the time that Dink's killing, along with
the 2006 killing of an Italian priest and the 2007 killing of three
Christians in Malatya, was part of an operation in the works being
carried out by Ergenekon. They also said that when Dink was facing
charges under the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) Article 301, which then
criminalized "insulting Turkishness," some of the people who are in
jail now as alleged Ergenekon members brought crowds of protestors
and even attacked Dink and his supporters as they entered and left
the courtroom.
In September last year, prosecutor Hikmet Usta announced his opinion
as to who masterminded the assassination and as to the accusations
directed at suspects during the 20th hearing of the Dink trial. The
prosecutor said the murder was the work of Ergenekon's Trabzon cell
and demanded life imprisonment for seven suspects, including key
suspects Hayal and Tuncel, on charges of attempting to destroy the
constitutional order.
Following the announcement of the court ruling, a group of people
supporting Dink's family and demanding justice for Hrant Dink showed
outrage with the ruling.
Dink family's lawyer, Fethiye Cetin, slammed the ruling, saying it
meant that a "state tradition of political murders" was deliberately
left intact because it did not deal with accusations of state
involvement in the 2007 murder.
"They made fun of us throughout the five-year trial process. We did not
know they saved the biggest joke to the very end," she told reporters
soon after the verdict was read out. "This ruling means a tradition
was left untouched. The state tradition of political murders. The
tradition of state discriminating against some of its citizens and
turning them into enemies," she said.
Cetin also vowed to pursue all available legal remedies against the
ruling, asserting that the verdict marked the end of only an initial
phase of the case, which consisted of the trial of hitmen in the
murder. The prosecutor in the case also plans to appeal the verdict.
In Brussels, Peter Stano, spokesperson for enlargement commissioner
Stefan Fule, said the EU recalls the ECtHR (European Court of Human
Rights) judgement in 2010, which found that Turkey had failed to
conduct effective investigations into the murder of Dink, thus not
guaranteeing his right to life.
In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights ordered Turkish
authorities to pay 100,000 euros to Dink's family in compensation,
saying authorities had failed to protect Dink even though they knew
ultra-nationalists were plotting to kill him.
He said all involved need to be held accountable before the law and
further judicial investigations into the implication of high ranking
officials need to be conducted. He added that the EU underlines the
importance for Turkey to address the systemic shortcomings in its
justice system as made evident in this ECtHR judgement and urged the
full execution of the ECtHR judgement which he said is crucial for
Turkey in order to fight impunity.
Court grants preliminary injunction against erasing of phone records
The court granted a preliminary injunction against the erasing of
mobile phone records for calls made in the area of the assassination.
According to the ruling, all calls made between the dates of Aug. 19,
2006 and Feb. 19, 2007 will be kept by the Telecommunications
Directorate (TÄ°B) as the prosecutor's office may ask for these
records at any time.
After the finalization of the case by the Ä°stanbul 14th High
Criminal Court, the Dink case is supposed to go to the Supreme Court
of Appeals, Cetin had told Today's Zaman, because the court demanded
the prosecution examine the TÄ°B records more thoroughly.
"If there is new evidence, the case could be reopened with an
additional indictment," Cetin said.
During the 24th hearing of the trial that took place on Jan. 9,
Cetin said the TÄ°B had provided the court with incorrect records of
phone calls made on the day of the murder, Jan. 19, 2007. TÄ°B told
the court that 6,235 phone conversations took place in the vicinity
at the time of the murder and that 9,300 people were carrying cell
phones in the area. It also said that its records showed no link to
any of the cell phones.
However, Cetin said at least five cell phone numbers belonging to
people who were present at the crime scene on the day of the murder
were directly connected to Mustafa Ozturk and Sahil Hacısalihoglu,
two suspects in the investigation.
She went on to claim that one of the numbers assigned to a cell phone
present in the area at the time of the murder had made 19 calls to
suspect Ozturk between the dates Oct. 22, 2005 -- about two years
prior to the murder -- and Jan. 27, 2007.
This was not the first time the Dink family lawyers have discovered
information that appears to have been secretly held from the
prosecution and the court. Footage from active security cameras at
shops and banks located close to the crime scene was also mysteriously
lost. These recordings would have been invaluable in identifying
those associated with the murderer on the day of the assassination.
The lawyers have been expressing their frustration that there may have
been attempts to protect the suspects. A lengthy list of suspicious
irregularities in the Dink murder investigation, including deleted
records and hidden files, suggestive of a police cover-up attempt,
has marred the judicial process.
Much of the evidence has indicated that the murder could have been
prevented. Since the day of the murder, mounting evidence has indicated
that the police were tipped off about the assassination plot some
months before the actual attack. Ä°stanbul's police chief has also
acknowledged that there was a tip-off about a possible attack on Dink,
but said its priority level was too low for his department to take
it seriously.
More dishearteningly, links between the police and suspects have been
revealed. For example, Erhan Tuncel, a key suspect in the murder,
was previously a police informant. Although Tuncel is suspected of
having incited Dink's murderer, he is also said to be the one who
tipped off Ä°stanbul police. Important evidence, including Tuncel's
police records, was hidden from the court. In fact, Tuncel's file
with the police was destroyed, since it constitutes a "state secret,"
according to officials.
The investigation has yielded more evidence linking the masterminds
of the murder plot to the police force in Ä°stanbul and Trabzon, the
hometown of most of the suspects and the place where the assassination
was planned, and in Ankara, where the police were in possession of
intelligence about the murder.
In July last year, Ogun Samast, the hitman in the murder of Dink,
was sentenced to nearly 23 years in jail. Samast, tried in juvenile
court because he was a minor at the time of the crime, was sentenced
by the court to 21 years, six months for "premeditated murder" and
one year, four months for carrying an unlicensed gun.
In his final testimony to the court, Samast called for his acquittal
and blamed certain newspapers and columnists, saying what he had read
in those papers had incited him to commit the crime. "How else would
I have known about Hrant Dink or Agos if they had not written about
them," he told the court.
Hrant's Friends vow to fight for justice to be served "Hrant's
Friends," who hold demonstrations before each trial demanding justice,
met at the BeÅ~_iktaÅ~_ and Dolmabahce Squares on Tuesday before the
hearing of the case started. Carrying a placard that read, "For Hrant,
for Justice," the group walked to the courthouse.
The group included Dink's widow, Rakel Dink, main opposition Republican
People's Party (CHP) İstanbul Chairman Oguz Kaan Salıcı, Voice of
the People Party (HAS Party) Ä°stanbul Chairman Mehmet Bekaroglu, Peace
and Democracy Party İstanbul deputy Sırrı Sureyya Onder and several
artists. They also chanted slogans such as, "This case won't end like
that," "Murderer state will be accountable," "You are my brother,
Hrant against fascism" and "We are all Hrant, we are all Armenians."
Garo Paylan, who read a statement on behalf of the group said in
regards to the expected ruling:
"The ruling is the state's decision. The ones who decided to take
Hrant from us five years ago -- the security forces, gendarmerie,
intelligence, judiciary, media, government, opposition -- will once
again make a decision in the courthouse. They will say that the murder
is the job of two or three hitmen. They will try to hide in their dark
world. But we know them. They don't know a thing: This case will not
end before we say that it did."
Paylan also reminded that it will be the fifth year of the Dink's
murder on Thursday. "We will shout out the words we have been shouting
at them for five years: You are murderers."
He also reminded that Hrant's Friends will gather in Taksim Square
on Jan. 19 and walk to the spot where Dink was killed. Similar
demonstrations are planned outside of Turkey as well. "We will be
out on the streets until we find you one by one. For Hrant," he added.
Today's Zaman
http://www.todayszaman.com/news-268795-suspect-gets-life-in-dink-murder-case-court-sees-no-deep-state-role.html
Jan 17 2012
Turkey
A Turkish court has handed down life imprisonment for Yasin Hayal,
a major suspect in the killing of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant
Dink, of instigating a murder while another suspect Erhan Tuncel was
acquitted of murder charges.
The Ä°stanbul 14th High Criminal Court issued its ruling in the
25th hearing of the case, ending a five-year trial. The two, and all
other suspects, were cleared of charges of membership in a terrorist
organization. Tuncel was given 10 years and six months for an unrelated
McDonalds bombing in 2004.
The late editor-in-chief of the Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, Dink
was shot dead on Jan. 19, 2007 by an ultranationalist teenager outside
the offices of his newspaper in Ä°stanbul in broad daylight. Evidence
discovered since then has led to claims that the murder was linked to
the "deep state," a term used in reference to a shady group of military
and civilian bureaucrats believed to have links with criminal elements.
Tuncel, one of the key suspects in the murder who was previously a
police informant, had his final defense statement at the hearing.
Tuncel, who was accused of being an instigator of the murder, said
that the murder was an action of Ergenekon, a clandestine organization
whose alleged members are currently standing trial in court cases on
charges of plotting against the government.
In 1999, lawyers in the trial over the murder of Dink had demanded that
the court request documents seized during the Ergenekon probe relating
to the organization's Cage Action Plan against minorities in Turkey.
The lawyers had stated at the time that Dink's killing, along with
the 2006 killing of an Italian priest and the 2007 killing of three
Christians in Malatya, was part of an operation in the works being
carried out by Ergenekon. They also said that when Dink was facing
charges under the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) Article 301, which then
criminalized "insulting Turkishness," some of the people who are in
jail now as alleged Ergenekon members brought crowds of protestors
and even attacked Dink and his supporters as they entered and left
the courtroom.
In September last year, prosecutor Hikmet Usta announced his opinion
as to who masterminded the assassination and as to the accusations
directed at suspects during the 20th hearing of the Dink trial. The
prosecutor said the murder was the work of Ergenekon's Trabzon cell
and demanded life imprisonment for seven suspects, including key
suspects Hayal and Tuncel, on charges of attempting to destroy the
constitutional order.
Following the announcement of the court ruling, a group of people
supporting Dink's family and demanding justice for Hrant Dink showed
outrage with the ruling.
Dink family's lawyer, Fethiye Cetin, slammed the ruling, saying it
meant that a "state tradition of political murders" was deliberately
left intact because it did not deal with accusations of state
involvement in the 2007 murder.
"They made fun of us throughout the five-year trial process. We did not
know they saved the biggest joke to the very end," she told reporters
soon after the verdict was read out. "This ruling means a tradition
was left untouched. The state tradition of political murders. The
tradition of state discriminating against some of its citizens and
turning them into enemies," she said.
Cetin also vowed to pursue all available legal remedies against the
ruling, asserting that the verdict marked the end of only an initial
phase of the case, which consisted of the trial of hitmen in the
murder. The prosecutor in the case also plans to appeal the verdict.
In Brussels, Peter Stano, spokesperson for enlargement commissioner
Stefan Fule, said the EU recalls the ECtHR (European Court of Human
Rights) judgement in 2010, which found that Turkey had failed to
conduct effective investigations into the murder of Dink, thus not
guaranteeing his right to life.
In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights ordered Turkish
authorities to pay 100,000 euros to Dink's family in compensation,
saying authorities had failed to protect Dink even though they knew
ultra-nationalists were plotting to kill him.
He said all involved need to be held accountable before the law and
further judicial investigations into the implication of high ranking
officials need to be conducted. He added that the EU underlines the
importance for Turkey to address the systemic shortcomings in its
justice system as made evident in this ECtHR judgement and urged the
full execution of the ECtHR judgement which he said is crucial for
Turkey in order to fight impunity.
Court grants preliminary injunction against erasing of phone records
The court granted a preliminary injunction against the erasing of
mobile phone records for calls made in the area of the assassination.
According to the ruling, all calls made between the dates of Aug. 19,
2006 and Feb. 19, 2007 will be kept by the Telecommunications
Directorate (TÄ°B) as the prosecutor's office may ask for these
records at any time.
After the finalization of the case by the Ä°stanbul 14th High
Criminal Court, the Dink case is supposed to go to the Supreme Court
of Appeals, Cetin had told Today's Zaman, because the court demanded
the prosecution examine the TÄ°B records more thoroughly.
"If there is new evidence, the case could be reopened with an
additional indictment," Cetin said.
During the 24th hearing of the trial that took place on Jan. 9,
Cetin said the TÄ°B had provided the court with incorrect records of
phone calls made on the day of the murder, Jan. 19, 2007. TÄ°B told
the court that 6,235 phone conversations took place in the vicinity
at the time of the murder and that 9,300 people were carrying cell
phones in the area. It also said that its records showed no link to
any of the cell phones.
However, Cetin said at least five cell phone numbers belonging to
people who were present at the crime scene on the day of the murder
were directly connected to Mustafa Ozturk and Sahil Hacısalihoglu,
two suspects in the investigation.
She went on to claim that one of the numbers assigned to a cell phone
present in the area at the time of the murder had made 19 calls to
suspect Ozturk between the dates Oct. 22, 2005 -- about two years
prior to the murder -- and Jan. 27, 2007.
This was not the first time the Dink family lawyers have discovered
information that appears to have been secretly held from the
prosecution and the court. Footage from active security cameras at
shops and banks located close to the crime scene was also mysteriously
lost. These recordings would have been invaluable in identifying
those associated with the murderer on the day of the assassination.
The lawyers have been expressing their frustration that there may have
been attempts to protect the suspects. A lengthy list of suspicious
irregularities in the Dink murder investigation, including deleted
records and hidden files, suggestive of a police cover-up attempt,
has marred the judicial process.
Much of the evidence has indicated that the murder could have been
prevented. Since the day of the murder, mounting evidence has indicated
that the police were tipped off about the assassination plot some
months before the actual attack. Ä°stanbul's police chief has also
acknowledged that there was a tip-off about a possible attack on Dink,
but said its priority level was too low for his department to take
it seriously.
More dishearteningly, links between the police and suspects have been
revealed. For example, Erhan Tuncel, a key suspect in the murder,
was previously a police informant. Although Tuncel is suspected of
having incited Dink's murderer, he is also said to be the one who
tipped off Ä°stanbul police. Important evidence, including Tuncel's
police records, was hidden from the court. In fact, Tuncel's file
with the police was destroyed, since it constitutes a "state secret,"
according to officials.
The investigation has yielded more evidence linking the masterminds
of the murder plot to the police force in Ä°stanbul and Trabzon, the
hometown of most of the suspects and the place where the assassination
was planned, and in Ankara, where the police were in possession of
intelligence about the murder.
In July last year, Ogun Samast, the hitman in the murder of Dink,
was sentenced to nearly 23 years in jail. Samast, tried in juvenile
court because he was a minor at the time of the crime, was sentenced
by the court to 21 years, six months for "premeditated murder" and
one year, four months for carrying an unlicensed gun.
In his final testimony to the court, Samast called for his acquittal
and blamed certain newspapers and columnists, saying what he had read
in those papers had incited him to commit the crime. "How else would
I have known about Hrant Dink or Agos if they had not written about
them," he told the court.
Hrant's Friends vow to fight for justice to be served "Hrant's
Friends," who hold demonstrations before each trial demanding justice,
met at the BeÅ~_iktaÅ~_ and Dolmabahce Squares on Tuesday before the
hearing of the case started. Carrying a placard that read, "For Hrant,
for Justice," the group walked to the courthouse.
The group included Dink's widow, Rakel Dink, main opposition Republican
People's Party (CHP) İstanbul Chairman Oguz Kaan Salıcı, Voice of
the People Party (HAS Party) Ä°stanbul Chairman Mehmet Bekaroglu, Peace
and Democracy Party İstanbul deputy Sırrı Sureyya Onder and several
artists. They also chanted slogans such as, "This case won't end like
that," "Murderer state will be accountable," "You are my brother,
Hrant against fascism" and "We are all Hrant, we are all Armenians."
Garo Paylan, who read a statement on behalf of the group said in
regards to the expected ruling:
"The ruling is the state's decision. The ones who decided to take
Hrant from us five years ago -- the security forces, gendarmerie,
intelligence, judiciary, media, government, opposition -- will once
again make a decision in the courthouse. They will say that the murder
is the job of two or three hitmen. They will try to hide in their dark
world. But we know them. They don't know a thing: This case will not
end before we say that it did."
Paylan also reminded that it will be the fifth year of the Dink's
murder on Thursday. "We will shout out the words we have been shouting
at them for five years: You are murderers."
He also reminded that Hrant's Friends will gather in Taksim Square
on Jan. 19 and walk to the spot where Dink was killed. Similar
demonstrations are planned outside of Turkey as well. "We will be
out on the streets until we find you one by one. For Hrant," he added.