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Human Rights Watch Says Turkish Court Protects Dink's Killers

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  • Human Rights Watch Says Turkish Court Protects Dink's Killers

    HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH SAYS TURKISH COURT PROTECTS DINK'S KILLERS

    asbarez
    Thursday, January 19th, 2012

    Human Rights Watch

    ISTANBUL--A Turkish court's verdict on January 17, that there was
    no state involvement or organized plot behind the 2007 shooting of
    the Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink is a travesty of justice,
    Human Rights Watch said Wednesday.

    "The Istanbul court's denial of the plot behind Hrant Dink's murder
    flies in the face of evidence," said Emma Sinclair-Webb, Turkey
    researcher at Human Rights Watch. "Five years after the killing,
    Turkey's criminal justice system remains unwilling to probe state
    collusion in political assassinations."

    Istanbul Heavy Penal Court No. 14 acquitted all 19 defendants accused
    of being part of a criminal organization responsible for Dink's murder
    on January 19, 2007. The court concluded that the crime was not the
    work of a criminal organization motivated by ideological aims and
    that there was no deeper plot behind the murder.

    The court sentenced Yasin Hayal to aggravated life imprisonment, up
    to 40 years in prison, for planning and organizing Dink's murder by
    17-year-old Ogun Samast. The court also sentenced Ahmet İskender and
    Ersin Yolcu, as accessories to the murder, to 12 years and 6 months
    imprisonment and Salih Hacısalioglu to 10 months for possession of
    unlicensed ammunition.

    Erhan Tuncel, who faced the same charges as Hayal, was acquitted
    of any involvement and sentenced to 10 years and 6 months for an
    entirely separate crime in September 2004: the bombing of a branch
    of McDonald's in Trabzon. Fifteen other defendants facing various
    charges in connection with the case were acquitted.

    Samast, tried separately in a juvenile court, was convicted in July
    2011, and sentenced to almost 23 years in prison for shooting Dink dead
    in the street in front of the Istanbul offices of the Agos newspaper,
    of which he was the founding editor. All the defendants are from the
    Pelitli district of Trabzon, in Turkey's eastern Black Sea region.

    "The court's treatment of the murder as a straightforward crime
    committed in isolation by a few young men belies the evidence of their
    deep connections with the security forces," Sinclair-Webb said. "It
    ignored the systematic failure by the Istanbul and Trabzon police
    and gendarmerie to take steps to try to prevent a murder they were
    repeatedly informed would happen,"

    The final statement of the prosecutor in the trial pointed to the
    existence of a criminal network, with links to the ultranationalist
    Ergenekon gang, among whose alleged members are state officials
    and members of the security forces who are currently on trial for
    plotting a coup. The prosecutor indicated that the evidence to prove
    the Ergenekon gang connection had been destroyed. But the prosecutor's
    investigation failed to follow many leads or to push for the inquiry
    to be broadened, Human Rights Watch said. The prosecutor, as well as
    lawyers for the Dink family, said they will appeal.

    Tuncel had worked as an informer for both the Trabzon police and
    the gendarmerie. The Trabzon police and gendarmerie, and police in
    Istanbul, were repeatedly alerted to a plot to kill Dink, but failed
    to take measures to prevent it.

    The prosecutor's investigation failed to press for the prosecution
    of state authorities who repeatedly withheld evidence during the
    investigation and contaminated other evidence. Both the prosecutor and
    the court in turn failed at every stage to use the authority of the
    criminal justice system to secure the compliance of state authorities
    in a criminal investigation and murder trial proceedings.

    Dink, the founding editor of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian
    newspaper Agos, was a courageous champion of open debate, dialogue,
    and cooperation among all communities in Turkey, and was committed
    to democratization and human rights. His killing was apparently
    politically and ethnically motivated. He was identified by
    his murderers as an Armenian who had been convicted in court for
    "insulting Turkishness."

    Dink had been prosecuted for an article in which he discussed Armenian
    identity. In July 2006, the General Penal Board of the Court of
    Cassation, Turkey's court of appeal, upheld a six-month suspended
    sentence for that publication under Article 301 of the Turkish penal
    code that criminalized "publicly insulting Turkishness." Dink was
    prosecuted again in September 2006, under the same provision, for
    using the term "genocide" in a statement made to the Reuters news
    agency to describe the massacres of Armenians in Anatolia at the end
    of the Ottoman Empire.

    In September 2010, the European Court of Human Rights delivered a
    tough verdict against Turkey for failure to protect Dink's life,
    failure to investigate his murder, and failure to uphold his right
    to freedom of expression.

    "The government has a clear duty to implement the judgment of
    the European Court, to cooperate fully to ensure that the full
    circumstances of state collusion in Dink's murder are thoroughly
    investigated and that state officials are not protected," said
    Sinclair-Webb.

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