Turkey to Hold Retrial in Murder of Turk Armenian Journalist
The man accused of instigating the 2007 murder of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in Turkey, along with 18 other suspects, will go back to court on Tuesday after an earlier verdict was overturned.
A hearing on the retrial will take place at a high criminal court in Istanbul where a large crowd is expected to gather to pay tribute and demand justice for Dink, who was a leading member of Turkey's tiny Armenian community, Garo Paylan of the Association of Friends of Hrant Dink told Agence France Presse.
Dink, 52, was shot dead in broad daylight outside the offices of his bilingual weekly newspaper Agos, sending shock waves across Turkey and triggering a wider scandal after reports that state security forces had known of the murder plot, but failed to act.
An Istanbul court in 2011 had sentenced Dink's self-confessed killer Ogun Samast, who was tried separately as he was juvenile at the time, to 23 years in jail.
A year later, the court sentenced the so-called mastermind of the murder, Yasin Hayal, to life imprisonment for inciting the killing but acquitted 18 other defendants, ruling that there was no conspiracy.
In May, Turkey's appeals court partially overturned the 2012 verdict. It upheld the conviction for Hayal but ordered a retrial to look into whether Hayal and the other 18 acquitted defendants belonged to a criminal network.
From the onset, Dink's lawyers had demanded a new investigation and a retrial to determine if there was a conspiracy behind the journalist's killing.
The appeals court in May acknowledged that there was a conspiracy behind the murder but stopped short of launching a deeper investigation into the potential involvement of Turkey's powerful institutions.
Dink's lawyers and human rights defenders believe that those behind the murder were protected by the state because Dink had received threats for a long time before he was killed, often writing about them in his columns published in Agos.
Every year since Dink's murder on January 19, 2007, thousands have gathered in front of the Agos offices on that date to remember the journalist, whose life-long campaign for reconciliation between Turks and Armenians won him as many enemies as admirers.
Source: Agence France Presse
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