Witnesses to be Brought to Court on Compulsion after 4 Years

The trial on the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was continued before the Istanbul 14^th High Criminal Court on Monday (28 March). At the 17^th hearing, the court board accepted the plaintiff lawyers' request to review the report issued by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK). In the report released last week it was stated that footage related to the assassination recorded by the security cameras of the Akbank Branch right next to the scene of crime could not be found.

Dink, founder and at the time Editor-in-Chief of the Armenian Agos newspaper, was lethally shot in front of his office in Şişli (Istanbul) on 19 January 2007.

Çetin: Records or deleted files certainly exist

According to contradictory statements in the report pointed out by Dink family lawyer Fethiye Çetin, the court decided to have a new report prepared by TÜBİTAK. Therefore, the hard discs of the Akbank branch security camera will be sent to the research council, the court decreed.

Lawyer Çetin objected the TÜBİTAK report, "The report claims that no footage or deleted files could be found in the records of the Akbank Pangaltı branch on the day of the incident. That is impossible".

"Banks always take footage. They just delete old records to create space for the new records. Hence, there must be the records or the deleted file for sure", Çetin argued. She demanded a technical investigation to determine whether the reviewed file belonged to the Akbank branch in Pangaltı (Şişli), to resolve the contradictions in the report and retrieve deleted files.

Father of prime suspect Samast not accepted as witness

The request of the plaintiff lawyers to hear Ahmet Samast, father of prime suspect Ogün Samast, as a witness was declined.

The court board chaired by Judge Rüstem Eryılmaz ruled to keep defendants Yasin Hayal and Erhan Tuncel in detention. Both defendants stand accused of "incitement to murder". Hayal and Tuncel attended the Monday hearing as well as un-detained defendants Ersin Yolcu, Salih Hacısalihoğlu and Ahmet İskender. The plaintiff party was represented by Rakel Dink, wife of the slain journalist, his brother Hosrof Dink, his daughter Delal Dink and journalist Ali Bayramoğlu.

The defence lawyer of defendant Tuncel, Erdoğan Soruklu, requested to broaden the investigation and objected to the file's transfer to the prosecution because from his point of view evidence had not been fully collected yet. However, the court dismissed this request.

Files not digitalized yet

Public Prosecutor Hikmet Usta remarked, "Even though the case file has already been sent to the prosecution for the final plea, the opinions and requests of the involved parties regarding a broadening of the investigation should be considered. Besides, we were not able to fully investigate the related 60 files because not all of them could be digitalized yet".

Eye-witnesses to be brought to court on compulsion

It was furthermore decided to bring eye-witnesses Emsale Çakmak and Cemal Yıldırım to court on compulsion and to wait for the reply of the Trabzon High Criminal Court on Duty related to witness Sinan Reşitoğlu.

Witnesses Mehmet Ali Temelocak and Erhan Şivil were heard in the morning session. Both men sat next to respectively behind triggerman suspect Samast on the coach on his way back to Trabzon (eastern Black Sea coast) after the murder. They had brief conversations with Samast and recalled that he told them that he had been to Istanbul to visit his uncle.

The trial was postponed to 30 May.(EÖ/EG/VK)