Trabzon Gendarmerie Trial Is Tied To Hrant Dink’s Murder Trial

The accused gendarmerie Veysel Şahin on trial in Trabzon makes a deposition for Dink’s murder trial in İstanbul. He says they warned their superiors, but they did not take precautions. The two cases may be combined.

Burdur

Trabzon Gendarmerie Trial Is Tied To Hrant Dink’s Murder Trial

Veysel Şahin, who is on trial for “gross negligence” while serving within the Trabzon Gendarmerie Command Post regarding the murder of Hrant Dink, gave the same statement he did in Trabzon to the 14^th High Court of İstanbul: “We warned our superiors about the murder plans. They did not take the necessary measures.”

Following his first statement in the 2^nd Criminal Court of Peace of Trabzon, which opened the way for the trial of Gendarmerie Regiment Commander Colonel Ali Öz and nine other officials, Şahin was ordered to make a deposition for the murder trial in İstanbul the day before (May 12).

Şahin: I will repeat the statement I made in Trabzon exactly

Making his deposition in Burdur, Şahin said that he would repeat exactly the statement he made for the 2^nd Criminal Court of Peace of Trabzon on March 20, 2008.

Following İğci’s confession that he had informed the gendarmerie regarding Hayal’s intention to go to Istanbul and study Hrant Dink’s home and the Agos newspaper, 14^th High Court of İstanbul decided to hear Şahin as a witness. Coşkun İğci was an informant for gendarmerie and the spouse of Yasin Hayal’s aunt from his mother’s side.

That Şahin repeated his Trabzon statement for İstanbul trial gave rise to the possibility that Trabzon gendarmerie authorities may be included in the Dink murder case.

“We transferred the information and the warnings İgci provided to our superiors”

Stating that he went together with sergeant major Okan Şimşek to meet İgci following the call they received from him, Şahin explained the conversation that took place as follows:

“İgci said that he was Hayal’s relative and Hayal was planning to kill the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, that he even went to İstanbul to study the route between Dink’s house and the Agos newspaper and that he saw all this. He also told that Hayal showed him Dink’s pictures taken from the internet and that Hayal had a group of 3 or 4 people with him and one of the members of this group was a university student, but he did not give his name at the time. He also showed us the three GSM numbers that Hayal and his friends were using, which were written on the piece of paper he took out from his pocket.”

Saying they checked and confirmed the information from the internet by making a search for Dink and Agos, Şahin added that they combined this with the internet information collected by expert sergeant Hacı Ömer and what sergeant major Okan said and recorded all this with the GSM numbers İğci provided. Since we had transferred this subject to the expert sergeant Hacı Ömer Ünal and Hüseyin master sergeant, we were not given an order to investigate the subject.”

“You will say that İğci gave this information after the murder”

In his deposition, Şahin also said that they met with İğci one more time following the orders by Colonel Ali Öz and Captain Metin Yıldız and told him not to share the information he gave them with anyone else. But once it was discovered that they knew about the murder, their superiors said, “Coşkun gave this information after the event, you will never accept the fact that he gave this information before.” Şahin concluded by stating that because of this, the information they gave to the civil and gendarmerie inspectors were not true.

The next hearing for the Dink case with 19 suspects, eight of which are arrested, will be on July 7. (EÖ/TK/TB)