Police Officer Zenit's Case with bianet Dismissed

The Ankara 25^th Criminal Court of First Instance dismissed the case for compensation filed against bianet by police officer Muhittin Zenit. Zenit had made the headlines with a telephone conversation between him and Erhan Tuncel, a defendant in the trial on the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

Zenit was at the Trabzon Police Intelligence when journalist Dink was assassinated on 19 January 2007. Half an hour after the murder, Zenit allegedly said in a telephone conversation with Tuncel, "So, they shot him directly in the head...That's the only difference. He wasn't going to run away, but this one did."

Zenit filed a TL 25,000 (€ 11,900) compensation claim with bianet after the conversation had been in the news. President Judge Ömer Kızılkaya rejected Zenit's claim in Tuesday's (23 March) hearing. In case Zenit should appeal to the decision, the file will be forwarded to the Court of Appeals Law Office.

The court had previously requested the Dink Murder file from the Istanbul 14^th High Criminal Court. However, the court decided to refrain from waiting for a related response prior to the pronouncement of the judgement

Zenit had filed his complaint on the grounds of an article entitled "It was clear how he was going to be shot", published on bianet on 30 September 2007, and another one entitled "New Evidence in Dink Murder: We'll Talk to President Muhsin about Yasin", published on 28 April 2008.

Total claim of TL 115,000 from bianet and NTV

bianet had reported on the claim that Tuncel had spoken on the phone to Zenit about the visit of Muhsin Yazıcıoğlu, chair of the Great Union Party (BBP) to Trabzon. When it emerged that the information taken from ntvmsnbc.com had been wrong, and that Tuncel had spoken not to Zenit but to a person called "Memduh Abi", bianet had published a correction and apology.

bianet had further reported on the news reported by Murat Utku, then working for the Doğan News Agency (DHA), citing the source. The news item said that Zenit spoke to Tuncel on the latter's mobile phone one hour and 47 minutes after the murder. bianet had given details of the conversation transcript.

According to the transcripts, Zenit said to Tuncel, "So, they shot him directly in the head...That's the only difference. He was not going to run away, but this one did." Zenit claims that Tuncel, who used swear words when talking about Dink and who said, 'Well done to whoever did it', did not know about the murder before.

Court of Appeals: NTV's right to inform...

Zenit's compensation claim of TL 90,000 (€ 42,850) filed with the Turkish news channel NTV was dismissed by the Court of Appeals of the 4^th Circuit. According to the decision taken in the end of December 2009, the Court of Appeals overruled the decision of the Ankara 1^st Criminal Court of First Instance for a partial acceptance of the compensation claim:

"The publication of the conversation does not constitute a violation of the freedom of the plaintiff's private conversations. The news as the subject of this case is corresponding to the developments of the murder of Dink, which caused a strong echo in society, and to the stage of its trial. Therefore, the news remains within the limits of the right to inform and is in line with the law". (EÖ/VK)