Turkey Former Trabzon police chief summoned to testify in Dink murder trial

Former Trabzon Police Chief Reşat Altay has been summoned by Prosecutor Yusuf Hakkı Doğan to testify in the trial into the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

Dink was assassinated in broad daylight outside the office of his Agos newspaper on Jan. 17, 2007.

Media reports say the prosecutor will also request that Yasin Hayal, a convict in the ongoing trial, and Erhan Tuncel, who was earlier found not guilty of the Dink murder, testify as part of the ongoing investigation.

When he testified in January 2012, Tuncel had accused former Trabzon Police Chief Altay of destroying all the evidence concerning the Dink murder.

According to a media report, Prosecutor Doğan also listened to the testimony of a police officer, Bahadır Tekin, on Monday. Tekin was asked about claims saying that he doctored a report to show he had checked out an address that was mentioned in an intelligence report sent from the Trabzon Police Department on Feb. 17, 2006. The doctored report also said one of Tekin’s colleagues, Özcan Özkan, went with him to scope out the address, which was located in İstanbul’s Ümraniye district, even though neither had gone there.

The intelligence report sent by Trabzon police had warned that Hayal — now a convict in the Dink murder trial — was planning to assassinate Dink. There are claims that Tekin had doctored his own report after the murder took place in order to make it seem as if he had gone to scope out the address before the murder. Tekin denied all claims directed at him in his testimony, according to media reports.

As part of the same investigation, two former heads of the intelligence unit of the National Police Department — Sabri Uzun and Ramazan Akyürek — and a former police chief, Ali Fuat Yılmazer, testified as suspects. Other high-profile figures have been called to testify as suspects, including former İstanbul Police Chief Celalettin Cerrah, former İstanbul Vice Governor Ergun Güngör and former İstanbul Police Department Intelligence Unit Chief Ahmet İlhan Güler.

Furthermore, Ogün Samast, who was sentenced to 21 years and six months in prison in 2011 for assassinating Dink, also testified as a witness in the ongoing investigation into the murder on Dec. 5. Samast had sent a letter to Prosecutor Doğan saying he wanted to speak about the murder. The prosecutor decided to listen to Samast as a witness in the investigation.

Dink was shot and killed by an ultra-nationalist teenager seven years ago. Samast and 18 others were brought to trial. During this time, the lawyers for the Dink family and the co-plaintiffs in the case presented evidence indicating that Samast did not act alone. Hayal was given life in prison for inciting Samast to murder. However, Tuncel, who worked as an informant for the Trabzon Police Department and was the man accused of initiating the effort to have Dink murdered, was found not guilty of the murder.