ISTANBUL (Hurriyet)–Murdered Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink’s lawyers at Monday’s trial petitioned the court to investigate all public institutions and officials as well as other people and organizations that were negligent or guilty in Dink’s murder.
Dink was murdered on Jan. 19, 2007 in front of the bilingual daily Agos in broad daylight.
The petitions, signed by the lawyers, first asked to start an investigation into the National Intelligence Organization (MIT), the Istanbul Police Department, the Trabzon Police Department, the Trabzon Gendarmerie Command, the Central Police Intelligence Unit, and the officials in these institutions who did not take precautions to protect Dink’s life.
The lawyers also asked the court to find the people who targeted Dink when he was alive. Also, those who organized attacks on Dink’s lawyers should be rooted out, said the attorneys.
“Those who hid and damaged evidence or published false documents with the purpose of manipulation and hiding the real perpetrators should be searched for,” said the lawyers. A security camera belonging to a private bank in Turkey showed the suspect, Ogun Samast, running away a few minutes after Dink was slain. However, camera footage was edited in the aftermath of the murder, and the lawyers have requested to find those responsible.
The lawyers asked whether Dink’s murder was planned as part of the Kafes (Cage) Operation Action Plan, an alleged plan including terror actions against non-Muslims in Turkey.
Meanwhile, Hurriyet columnist Eyup Can claimed in his Tuesday column that a critical document in the Dink case might be faulty. The Trabzon Police Department’s intelligence unit said they informed the Istanbul Police that Yasin Hayal, an arrested suspect in the Dink case, was planning an action in Istanbul before Dink’s murder and that he would stay at his brother, Osman Hayal’s, place in Istanbul’s Osmangazi township.
“Fethiye Cetin, a lawyer for the Dink family, says there are two documents with the same date and signed by the same officers, Yusuf Kartal and Fadil Erkin, which is a suspicious situation,” wrote Can. The officers were seen both checking Osman Hayal’s place in Sarigazi in one document and as working in Fatih from morning to night on the same day according to another document. “As one person cannot be in two places at the same time, one of these documents is faulty,” wrote Can.
The document saying the officers were in Fatih was correctly written in the terms of style and content, however, the one showing them in Sarigazi has problems, said Cetin to Can. “Ahmet Ilhan, head of the intelligence unit in Istanbul at that time, said the police officers can go from one post to another in the same day, and he added that personally he believes the police officers actually searched Osman Hayal’s place,” said Can.
Meanwhile, Erhan Tuncel, a suspect in the Dink case and a former police informant in Trabzon, has applied for the tests to become a corrections officer although he was arrested, reported CNNTurk news Web site on Monday. He took the test on Feb. 2 but failed the exam because he could not satisfy the physical criteria.
