Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was assassinated in broad daylight on Jan. 19, 2007 in front of the building of the Agos weekly in İstanbul. (Photo: Today’s Zaman, Kürşat Bayhan)

Two gendarmerie intelligence officers from the Trabzon Provincial Gendarmerie Command went to the apartment where Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink lived in the Bakırköy district of İstanbul several days before he was killed in January 2007, Al Jazeera Turk reported on Wednesday.

Dink was shot and killed by ultranationalist Ogün Samast outside the office of the Agos weekly, a newspaper he edited, on Jan. 19, 2007.

Referring to the officers by the initials “H” and “Z,” Al Jazeera Turk claimed that they asked the building’s doorman if Dink lived there. According to the report, the doorman had already testified to the prosecutor in the investigation into Dink’s murder that the officers introduced themselves to him as security personnel and asked about Dink. The doorman’s claim that gendarmes visited the building was confirmed by the detection of signals from two gendarmes’ phones near Dink’s apartment, Al Jazeera Turk reported.

A report published on the Internethaber online news portal on Jan. 4 claimed that new video footage linked to the assassination of Dink has recently emerged. According to the report, the footage shows six gendarmerie intelligence officers in front of the Agos newspaper building at the time of the murder. The report also said that the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office detected signals received from telephones belonging to six gendarmerie officers near Dink’s apartment at the time he was killed. The news portal also alleged that if the prosecutor’s office confirms that the six individuals detected were actually gendarmerie intelligence officers, this would prove that Dink’s murder was committed under the supervision of the gendarmerie.

Al Jazeera Turk claimed in its report that the prosecutor’s office has already confirmed the identity of one gendarmerie intelligence officer in the footage and has also acquired significant information about another officer but has not yet determined his identity.

Citing a number of sources within the police force, Al Jazeera Turk also claimed that the police had found that the gendarmes who visited Dink’s apartment before the assassination and the other officer identified in the footage were all linked to a gendarme lieutenant identified by the initials M.D. The report claims that M.D. was coordinating the officers and has been found to be at the center of phone traffic involving the gendarmes allegedly connected with the Dink murder. In addition, Al Jazeera Turk claimed that the phone traffic intensified days before the Dink murder and that M.D. welcomed the officers “H” and “Z” when they arrived in İstanbul from Trabzon before Dink’s murder.

The Radikal news portal reported last Friday that a separate investigation has been launched into a number of gendarmerie officers concerning Dink’s murder, in addition to the ongoing trial of 25 public officials on charges of negligence and misconduct. Early in December of last year, the İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office accepted an indictment against 25 public officials after it was rejected for a second time in November. Among them are National Police Department Intelligence Unit Police Chief Engin Dinç and former İstanbul Police Chief Celalettin Cerrah.

Radikal also reported that a friend of Yasin Hayal, a key suspect in an ongoing trial concerning the Dink murder, told gendarmerie officers in Trabzon about a murder plot against Dink before his killing. Furthermore, Radikal stated that the recent investigation involving gendarmes includes 12 officers from the Trabzon Provincial Gendarmerie Command and an officer from the İstanbul Gendarmerie intelligence branch and that Süleyman Kartal, a friend of Hayal from Trabzon, revealed a plot to kill Dink to both the Trabzon Police Department and the Trabzon Provincial Gendarmerie Command months before the murder.

Media outlets have reported that Kartal, who was interrogated by the İstanbul Police Department’s Counterterrorism Unit in December 2013, told the police that he shared information with gendarmes Okan Şimşek and Veysel Şahin about the murder plot months before it took place. Şimşek and Şahin had already earlier admitted that they knew about a plot to kill Dink six months before the murder took place and recounted that they had informed Gendarmerie intelligence director Capt. Metin Yıldız, who in turn informed former Trabzon gendarmerie commander Col. Ali Öz. The two officers testified that Öz did nothing upon receiving the information.

Öz and gendarmes Şahin, Şimşek, Metin Yıldız, Önder Aras, Hüseyin Yılmaz and Hacı Ömer Ünaldı were tried at the Trabzon 2nd Criminal Court of Peace on charges of “neglecting duty and forging documents” in 2011. The Trabzon court handed down prison sentences of six months each to Öz, Yıldız and four other gendarmes. However, the Supreme Court of Appeals reversed the verdict on Nov. 11, 2015, stating that the case was outside the court’s jurisdiction and sent the case to retrial at a high criminal court. The retrial is currently in progress.

Radikal also claimed on Friday that in addition to Öz, Yıldız, Şahin and Şimşek, the ongoing investigation against the gendarmes includes nine more gendarmerie officers whose names were not previously included among the suspects in the murder case.

Source: Todayzaman