Istanbul: Dink friends protest to demand fair trial

December 19, 2016 By administrator

A Turkish civic group identifying itself as Friends of Hrant Dink on Monday held a protest outside the Istanbul Chaglayan Justice Palace to demand a fair trial over the Turkish –Armenian journalist’s assassination.

Dink, the editor-in-chief of the Turkish-Armenian daily Ago, was gunned down outside his office in the city’s Shishli district on January 19, 2007. The trial against his assassin, ultra-nationalist Ogun Samast (who was 16 at the time), has been dragging on for almost 10 years.

In a statement, the group blamed the Turkish state for collaborating with the perpetrators, Agos reports.
They activist said they no longer expect a fair trial against the backdrop of the continuing violence and abuses in Turkey. Meantime, they expressed determination to continue their “campaign for justice”.

Istanbul: Dink case judge Bunyamin Karakash detained over Gulen probe

December 3, 2016 By administrator

Bünyamin Karakaş, one of the judges trying suspects of Hrant Dink’s murder, was arrested on Dec. 2, 2016 (Source: Hurriyet Daily News)

One of the judges who is trying 35 suspects for the murder of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink in 2007 was detained on December 2 on accusations that he is tied to the Gülenist organization.
Bunyamin Karakash, who did not attend the Friday hearing, was apprehended by police teams while he was in his room at the Istanbul courthouse. The detention came during a recess in the hearing in which suspect Ramazan Akyürek was in the dock, Hurriyet Daily News reports.
The court, gathering after the short break, decided to adjourn its meeting for two hours due to Karakaş’s detention.
Karakash was among 192 judges and prosecutors who were sought for detention as part of a probe into Gulenists opened by Ankara prosecutors on December 1.
Some 55 of the legal personnel were serving in Istanbul.

A total of 191 judges and prosecutors out of the 192 were suspended as part of the investigation, said a judicial source.
No administrative actions were taken against one suspect because he had retired although he remains on a wanted list.
The suspects were said to be serving at first-degree courts.
To date, more than 3,600 judges and prosecutors have been dismissed since the July 15 coup attempt that left 248 dead and nearly 2,200 wounded.
The Gulenist organization, led by US-based Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen, is accused of orchestrating Turkey’s July 15 coup plot.
In the Dink case, hearings against former Police Intelligence Department personnel began on November 28.
Dink was shot dead at the age of 52 in broad daylight outside the offices of the Turkish-Armenian weekly newspaper Agos in central Istanbul on January 19, 2007.
Ogun Samast, then a 17-year-old jobless high-school dropout, confessed to the murder and was sentenced to almost 23 years in jail in 2011.
But the case grew into a wider scandal after it emerged that the security forces had been aware of a plot to kill Dink but failed to act.

Istanbul: Cerrah blamed Hrant Dink: Why didn’t he ask for protection?

November 12, 2016 By administrator

Answering the questions of lawyers, Celalettin Cerrah blamed Hrant Dink: “Why didn’t he ask for protection?”

Dink family’s lawyer Hakan Bakırcıoğlu asked Cerrah whether he knew about the hearings in Şişli Courthouse, which made Dink a target. Bakırcıoğlu stated that the criminal complaint against Dink on charge of insulting Turkish nation was filed by Avni Usta, an official from Istanbul Security Directorate.

Cerrah said that he was very busy as he was the chief and stated that he heard the staff talking about the measures that were taken around the courthouse.

Lawyer Sebu Aslangil said that he was attacked in the courthouse, while Hrant Dink was with him.

Cerrah asked: “Haven’t you warned him? I know. They said that we should provide protection to Dink, but he didn’t accept it. Why?”

Yılmazer: the prime minister directed me

Ali Fuat Yılmazer also spoke in the hearing. He said that he wanted to inform Cerrah, but he didn’t listened to what he had to say. “Since he didn’t give me any direction, the prime minister directed me. Then we discovered the part that gendarmerie forces played in the murder. Now Engin Dinç says that they discovered it, but it was us. We just didn’t start a legal process. Engin Dinç started to talk about these issue after July 15, but we have been knowing it since the beginning.”

Turkey: Video New footage of Dink murder assailant released “1.5+1 Million Armenian murdered by Turks”

September 8, 2016 By administrator

dink-footage New footage showing the assailant in the 2007 murder of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink as he was chatting with police officers in a tea room of the police station where he was brought after being caught surfaced on Sept. 8, a day after nine-year-old other video images related to the crime were revealed.

In newly-published footage released by Channel 24, Dink murder convict Ogün Samast is seen with a group of police officers in the police station in the northern province of Samsun, where he was brought to be interrogated. During their conversation police officers are seen sitting next to Samast and asking him about the details of the act, while some others are taking photos of him, instructing him to “smile.”

The same officer who questioned Samast can be seen in the images later praising him for his act before assuring him that the images “would never be released” and that he could talk freely.

In another image, Samast can be seen posing with a Turkish flag.

In his statements, Samast, while watching surveillance camera footage of his act, is heard talking about how he conducted the murder.

“I followed him for two or three days. I took out my gun and shot him. I went and waited in front of his door; I came and shot [him],” said Samast.

On Sept. 7, footage was published by a Turkish broadcaster appearing to show that six former gendarmerie intelligence officers, who are currently being tried over links to the Fethullahist Terror Organization (FETÖ), were complicit in the 2007 assassination of Dink. In the images published by A Haber, they can be seen near the scene at the time of Dink’s murder.

Dink, 52, was shot dead with two bullets to the head in broad daylight outside the offices of Agos in central Istanbul.

Samast, then a 17-year-old jobless high-school dropout, confessed to the murder and was sentenced to almost 23 years in jail in 2011.

But the case grew into a wider scandal after it emerged that security forces had been aware of a plot to kill Dink but failed to act.

Relatives and followers of the case have long claimed government officials, police, military personnel and members of Turkey’s National Intelligence Agency (MİT) played a role in Dink’s murder by neglecting their duty to protect the journalist.

Turkey’s top court in July 2014 ruled that the investigation into the killing had been flawed, paving the way for the trial of the police officials.

In January 2016, Supreme Court of Appeals ruled to tie the main case into Dink’s murder and prosecution into the public officers’ negligence to prevent the killing of Dink. Indictments for 26 people are now included in the merged case.

September/08/2016

Source: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/new-footage-of-dink-murder-assailant-released.aspx?pageID=238&nID=103733&NewsCatID=509

Turkey: Five more gendarmerie officers arrested in Dink probe

August 11, 2016 By administrator

Five former gendarmerie intelligence officers have been arrested while there others were freed on probation as part of the probe into the 2007 assassination of Turkish journalist Hrant Dink, the Hurriyet Daily News reports.

The arrested suspects, all of whom were on duty in the northern province of Trabzon at the time of Dink’s murder, are also facing charges of attempting to abolish the constitutional order and membership of an armed terrorist organization, as the Istanbul Peace Court stated Volkan Şahin, Şeref Ateş, Okan Şimşek, Hüseyin Yılmaz and Gazi Günay had contact with the prime suspect in Dink’s killing and some had been spotted around Dink’s home and office some four months before the incident, despite the fact none of them had any documents showing they had been assigned to a post in the area.

In its arrest decision, the court also said that the suspects, along with others, acted with common ideas and despite knowing that the crime was going to be committed, acted to serve the murder in line with the aims of the organization which was to seize the duties and cadres of the Istanbul Police Department’s Intelligence Chief Bureau.

The arrests brought the number of gendarmerie officers arrested as part of the probe to nine. Previously, Specialized Sgt. Abdullah Dinç, former Specialized Gendarme Yusuf Bozca, former Trabzon Gendarmerie Intelligence Chief Bureau Officer Ergün Yorulmaz and former Sgt. Emre Cingöz had been arrested.

With the recent arrests of gendarmerie and security officers in the probe, prosecutors also brought charges against the suspects related to the Fethullahist Terror Organization (FETÖ), as the prosecutor of the probe, Gökalp Kürkçü, said in one of his arrest demand letters that it would be “far from a legal definition” to identify the acts of the suspects as only membership or leadership of an armed terrorist organization and participation in deliberate murder at the point reached in the wake of the failed July 15 coup attempt, and that the Dink murder was the “first bullet fired” in the process which led to this attempt.

Dink, 52, was shot dead with two bullets to the head in broad daylight outside the offices of Agos in central Istanbul on Jan. 19, 2007.

Ogün Samast, then a 17-year-old jobless high-school dropout, confessed to the murder and was sentenced to almost 23 years in jail in 2011.

But the case grew into a wider scandal after it emerged that security forces had been aware of a plot to kill Dink but failed to act.

Turkey’s top court in July 2014 ruled that the investigation into the killing had been flawed, paving the way for the trial of police officials.

Turkey: Local intel police officer warned of Dink murder ‘10 months in advance’

June 20, 2016 By administrator

REUTERS photo

A former intelligence police officer on trial for negligence in the murder of slain journalist Hrant Dink said in his defense on June 20 that he had notified the state of Dink’s imminent murder “10 months before the incident,” during the fifth hearing of a court trying some 35 suspected state officials.

A public prosecutor demanded a life sentence for Muhittin Zenit, an officer at the provincial bureau of intelligence in the Black Sea province of Trabzon at the time of Dink’s murder, for “voluntary manslaughter” by withholding intelligence information that could have prevented the assassination.In his defense in the fifth hearing of the trial, Zenit denied the allegations and said he “performed his intelligence duties in the best possible way” while he was on duty in Trabzon.

“I prepared reports stating that Yasin Hayal had a big grudge against Armenians and that he would kill Dink no matter what,” Zenit said, referring to the instigator of Dink’s murderer, Ogün Samast.

Hayal was also responsible for a 2004 bomb attack targeting a McDonald’s restaurant in Trabzon for selling food during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, accompanied by his collaborator, Erhan Tuncel, who turned out to be a “deputy intelligence officer.”

In his testimony, Zenit also referred to a European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling, suggesting that Trabzon police notified Istanbul police that Hayal was capable of murdering Dink but the latter failed to take action with regards to the information.

“I notified my state of the [imminent] murder [of Dink] 10 months in advance,” Zenit said.

“In which other way could I have stated in my reports that Dink was to be murdered?” he added, before apologizing to Dink’s wife Rakel Dink for failing to protect her slain husband.

“Hrant Dink was not a person who harmed this country, that’s why he was targeted. He was chosen as a target due to something he said and he was brought to death step by step,” Zenit told the court, saying he owed an apology to only one person – Rakel Dink.

Meanwhile, a group of Hrant Dink’s colleagues and rights activists named “Hrant’s Friends” once again gathered in front of the courthouse in Istanbul’s Çağlayan neighborhood and criticized as “hardly believable” the testimony of former Trabzon Police Chief Reşat Altay during the previous hearing of the trial. Trabzon’s police chief at the time of Dink’s assassination in 2007, Altay, denied the charges against him for “negligence in public duty” and demanded his acquittal during the fourth hearing of the trial on May 26, claiming that important information was withheld from him on purpose by other members of the police organization.

Altay claimed important information was withheld from him on purpose, blaming the purported “parallel state” for allegedly keeping him in the dark.

“We demanded nine years for the trial of the public official who had a responsibility in the murder,” journalist Pınar Öğünç said, speaking on behalf of Hrant’s Friends, adding they did not consider Altay’s testimony “believable.”

Öğünç reiterated their determination to continue a legal battle against negligent state officials.

Relatives and followers of the case have claimed government officials, police, military personnel and members of Turkey’s National Intelligence Agency (MİT) played a role in Dink’s murder by neglecting their duty to protect the journalist.

Turkey’s top court in July 2014 ruled that the investigation into the killing had been flawed, paving the way for the trial of the police officials.

All the names of the suspects implicated in the investigation were reported to have been on duty in police departments in Istanbul, Ankara and Trabzon at the time of Dink’s murder.

Dink, 52, was shot dead with two bullets to the head in broad daylight outside the offices of Agos in central Istanbul on January 19, 2007.

Samast, then a 17-year-old jobless high-school dropout, confessed to the murder and he was sentenced to almost 23 years in jail in 2011.

But the case grew into a wider scandal after it emerged that the security forces had been aware of a plot to kill Dink but failed to act.

June/20/2016

Source: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/#panel-7

Dink’s attorneys apply to ECHR demanding to resume prosecution of Turkish officials

June 1, 2016 By administrator

dink case Attorneys of Hrant Dink, assassinated Turkish-Armenian journalist, have filed a complaint with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) against the Turkish court. The latter earlier decided to stop the prosecution of the officials linked with the investigation of Dink’s murder.

Dink’s attorneys also appealed to the Constitutional court, noting that those officials had to do with in the preparation of Dink’s murder.

Moreover, the attorneys noted that a number of officials weren’t involved in the investigation at all.

OSCE representative urges Turkey to bring masterminds behind Dink murder to justice

January 19, 2016 By administrator

dink justice Commemorating the ninth anniversary of the assassination of the Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media Dunja Mijatović reiterated her call for a swift and transparent judicial procedure to identify the masterminds behind the murder, the OSCE stated.

“I remain hopeful that recent developments in the trial will help bring the masterminds behind the murder to justice,” Mijatović said, referring to the December 2015 decision of the Istanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office to approve an indictment by prosecutor Gökalp Kökçü to investigate 25 public officials on charges of negligence and misconduct related to the murder.

“I trust that the trial will finally serve justice to Dink’s family, friends and colleagues,” Mijatović said. “Exposing the masterminds would also demonstrate to the entire society the importance of freedom of expression, and the continued need to fight violence against journalists.”

Dink, the editor-in-chief of the Armenian bi-weekly Agos, was gunned down on January 19, 2007 in front of his then-office in Istanbul.

In 2011, the perpetrator, Ogün Samast, was sentenced by a juvenile court to 22 years and ten months for the murder.

After long court proceedings and appeals, a new probe was ultimately launched in the Hrant Dink murder case, and regarding several former and serving senior Turkish officials.

Turkey Report: 2 gendarmes went to Dink’s apartment only days before murder

January 13, 2016 By administrator

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

Turkey: Hrant Dink prosecutor Kökçü Gokalp, taken from investigation

January 11, 2016 By administrator

Dink murder in the indictment related to public officials and relevant organizations currently investigating the murder of Dink rootlets Gokalp’s positions were changed.

According to Aljazeera’s news Turkey, Istanbul Chief Prosecutor Hadi Salihoğlu, 2016 business section and the operating instructions issued. Salihoğlu has made significant changes in the mandate of the court.

According to the report, in the framework of the Business section of the instructions filed on Dink murder public officials under Gokalp rootlets was also the changes in the task. Sledgehammer claims of the caliper and Dunk conducting the investigation into the murder is the gendarmerie intelligence officers in the region identified Kökçü prosecutor was appointed to the General Preparation Bureau of Investigation. Kökçü not refer to the investigation covered terrorism. Dunk and Sledgehammer investigation on the rootlets of the hand will be transferred to another prosecutor.

The doorman instead of Orhan appointed as deputy attorney general responsible for the terrorist responsible for the smuggling Bureau Irfan Saplings were introduced.

The indictment had been returned twice

Prosecutors Kökçü, in December 2014, was tasked with looking into the Dink murder investigation. Prosecutors Kökçü, period, Istanbul Police Chief Celalettin Surgeon EGM Intelligence Department, former President Sabri Uzun, Trabzon Provincial Police former Chief Resat Altay and the Police Intelligence Department Head Engin Dinc had also organized 26 indictment of public officials, among them. The indictment was returned by the Attorney General’s prosecutors held twice.