The İstanbul 14th High Criminal Court began a review of the trial late last year after the Supreme Court of Appeals overturned in May the İstanbul court’s ruling of Jan. 17, 2012, in which it dismissed the involvement of an organized criminal network in the murder.
Tuncel was released as part of legal amendments made for lengthy trials and Tuncel exceeded the maximum period he could be jailed as a suspect.
Tuncel, who worked as an informant for the Trabzon Police Department, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his role in the 2004 bombing of a McDonald’s restaurant in the Black Sea town of Trabzon but was acquitted of all charges regarding the Dink murder, including prosecutors’ claims in the first trial that he was the one who ordered Yasin Hayal, the man who was given a life sentence for soliciting Dink’s shooter, to murder him.
Tuncel, along with all other defendants, were cleared of charges of membership in a terrorist organization in a previous local court’s ruling.
Dink was shot and killed in broad daylight on Jan. 19, 2007, by an ultranationalist teenager outside the offices of his newspaper in İstanbul. 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 to criminal elements.