Dink Murder Trial: Samast Arrived Yet Failed To Talk

On Monday, 20 April, was the 9th hearing of the Hrant Dink murder case at the Istanbul 14th Heavy Penal Court.

Journalist Hrant Dink, editor-in-chief of the weekly Turkish-Armenian Agos newspaper, had been shot dead in front of his office in Şişli, Istanbul, on 19 January 2007.

As before every hearing, a group of human rights activists gathered near the court building in Beşiktaş to express their demands for justice. The hearing lasted around 2.5 hours.

Court refused to call high-ranking officers

Joint attorneys demanded that several high-ranking police and gendarmerie officers be called as witnesses in the case, but their demand was rejected by the court on the grounds that they “would not bring anything new to the case.”

The officers in question are Istanbul Chief of Police Celalettin Cerrah, former Istanbul intelligence branch head Ahmet İlhan Güler, police general directorate intelligence department chief Ramazan Akyürek, Trabzon Chief of Police Reşat Aylta, and Trabzon gendarmerie regiment commander Colonel Ali Öz.

The prosecution also opposed the calling of the officers as witnesses, and in addition called for the release of suspects Ersin Yolcu and Ahmet İskender.

International support for Dink family

The hearing was attended by Kadriye Karcı, representative of the leftist party Die Linke in Germany, Sezgin Tanrıkulu, former president of the Diyarbakır Bar Association, Emma Sinclair-Webb from Human Rights Watch, director Sırrı Süreya Önder, Vincent Niore, secretary of the criminal law commission of the Paris Bar Association, conference secretary Matthieu Brocher, also of the Paris Bar Association, Alexandre Couyoumdjian, president of the French Lawyer’s Union (AFAJA), and union members Rose-Marie Frangulian Le Priol and Alexandre Aslanian.

The five lawyers from Paris made a statement to journalists, saying:

“We desire the identification of all those directly and indirectly responsible for the murder and that the murder case be solved. We will show solidarity with the Dink family as long as the trial goes on.”

Around fifteen joint attorneys were in court, as well as Hrant Dink’s widow Rakel Dink, their daughter Delal Dink, and his brothers Orhan and Yusuf Dink.

Havva Sezen, lawyer for defendant Mustafa Öztürk, demanded in the afternoon that the visitors from the Paris Bar Association  remove their gowns or be sent out of the court room. Joint attorneys Bayram Bahri Belen, Kemal Aytaç and Fethiye Çetin protested against the demand. The court did not make a decision on this issue.

The part of the hearing before the lunch break was attended by detained suspects Yolcu and İskender and Öztürk, who was province head of the ultranationalist Alperen Hearths at the time of the murder. He is being tried without detention.

Five witnesses claim existence of different hitman

In the morning the court listened to five prisoners from Silivri prison who had applied to appear as witnesses. Volkan Eryeliğ, Şinasi Şentürk, Veli Halis Çelik, Orçun Cürek,  and Adil Orhan said in very similar statements that Samast had only been used as a pawn, but that someone else had pulled the trigger.

The five witnesses based their statements on claims by Ertuğrul Balcı, son of former Istanbul Chief of Police Şükrü Balcı, who was in prison for murder and with whom they had shared a cell for some time.

The witnesses said that they had made detailed statements to the prison authorities, but that their initial applications to appear in court had been rejected They were then sent to different cells and had to apply a second time. They said they could not understand this procedure.

Samast uncooperative

Ogün Samast, suspected hitman in the murder, had excused himself from attending the last two hearings on health grounds, but he was present at this hearing.

Following the statements of the five witnesses, he was questioned by the joint attorneys. However, Samast said, “I do not want to answer any of your questions.”

When he was asked, “You met friends in Eyüp (a part of Istanbul) and walked around. How did you find the place of the Agos office the first time?”, Samast answered, “I remembered the address. I asked people. If there was anyone with me, prove it. That’s how sure I am. There was no one with me.”

He avoided answering some more questions by replying, “I told you this before.” He said that he acted out of fear of Yasin Hayal, on trial as an instigator, about whom he had heard things. When Samast spoke about this fear, he said that Hayal’s former lawyer, Fuat Turgut, now himself a suspect in the Ergenekon trial, had visited his family. “Five months ago, he went to my family’s house. My family is not telling me what he said so that I don’t lose morale.”

When joint attorney Arzu Becerik asked questions, he said, “You are asking as if you are going to beat me, I am not going to answer.”

He reacted strongly to questions about his family and claimed not to remember how long he had used the two SIM cards for his mobile phone and how he had lost them.

There are twenty suspects in the case, five in detention. Two of them, police informant and alleged instigator to the murder Erhan Tuncel and Yasin Hayal were excluded from the hearing as a punishment for arguing in court at the previous hearing on 26 January.

Court refusing to put parts together

Currently, no public or police officers are suspects in the trial, despite the fact that the murder was considered “a sensational event aimed at pushing the country into chaos” by the Ergenekon investigation.

Despite the insistence of the Dink family, the court is resisting the merging of the main murder trial with a trial in Trabzon, where police and gendarmerie officers are on trial for neglecting to do their duty after finding out about murder plans before the murder took place.

As a result, the family has applied to the European Court of Human Rights. A second application to the ECHR has been made because of the refusal of the court to call police chief Cerrah and his officers. (EÖ/EZÖ/AGÜ)