Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

ISTANBUL: Arrested policemen begin blame game in Dink case

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • ISTANBUL: Arrested policemen begin blame game in Dink case

    Hurriyet Daily News, Turkey
    Jan 23 2015


    Arrested policemen begin blame game in Dink case

    ISTANBUL


    Officers arrested in the murder case of Armenian-Turkish journalist
    Hrant Dink have joined the civilian suspects in blaming one-time
    allies or colleagues for the killing, after the inspection was
    recently widened.

    Policeman Muhittin Zenit, one of the key suspects in the case who was
    arrested last week, said his superiors used him as bait, forcing him
    to talk on the phone with one of the organizers of the assassination.

    Zenit said in his testimony that four of his superiors wanted him to
    talk to Erhan Tuncel, one of the figures behind the convicted
    triggerman Ogün Samast, on Jan. 19, 2007, the day Dink was killed,
    according to a report on the Radikal news portal on Jan. 23.

    Zenit said the superiors were Ali Fuat Yılmazer, then-Istanbul police
    intelligence chief, and Engin Dinç and Faruk Sarı, the two Trabzon
    police intel chiefs at the time, adding that Trabzon branch chief
    Ercan Demir wanted him to call Tuncel.

    `I see the people who I think was negligent in the murder used me as
    bait,' he told the judge on Jan. 22. `The real suspects have hidden
    themselves.'

    The triggerman also alleged last month that then-Trabzon police chief
    Ramazan Akyürek and Yılmazer were behind the murder.

    Samast assassinated Dink in broad daylight on a busy street outside
    the office of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos in Istanbul's
    Å?iÅ?li district. Samast is serving a sentence of 22 years and 10 months
    in a high-security prison. Yusuf Hayal and Tuncel are accused of
    encouraging Samast to kill Dink, in the Black Sea province of Trabzon.

    Civil servants and institutions allegedly implicated in the murder
    should be investigated, the Constitutional Court ruled on July 17,
    2014. The ruling became a milestone in the case that has been
    lingering since the killing in 2007.

    On Jan. 23, however, a court rejected Dink's family's request for the
    inspection to be deepened, ruling that such a move would cause the
    issue to linger even longer.

    A group, `Friends of Hrant,' gathered in front of the courthouse as
    the decision was being made. Aydın Engin, a journalist with the group,
    said the government's efforts to put the blame for the murder entirely
    on the so-called `parallel structure,' a symbolic phrase used by top
    officials for the Gülenist movement, was unconvincing.

    January/23/2015

    http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/arrested-policemen-begin-blame-game-in-dink-case.aspx?pageID=238&nid=77373&NewsCatID=509

Working...
X