On 19 January 2007, the editor-in-chief of the weekly Turkish-Armenian Agos newspaper, Hrant Dink, was murdered in front of his office in central Istanbul. The suspected gunman O.S. and eighteen other, mostly young, men are on trial; eight of them are in police detention.
At the fourth hearing at the Istanbul 14th Heavy Penal Court yesterday (25 February), suspect Ersin Yolcu was questioned in the morning. He stands accused of aiding and abetting the crime and faces 15 to 20 years imprisonment.
Again insults...
During the lunch break of the hearing, suspect Yasin Hayal’s lawyer Fuat Turgut, known for his ultranationalist leanings and aggressive manner, insulted the joint attorneys. He also insulted Armenians in general.
The joint attorneys demanded that the court president remove Turgut from the court room. Judge Erkan Canak warned Turgut.
One of the joint attorneys, Kezban Hatemi, told journalists during the break that gunman suspect O.S. had insulted her.
Requests by joint attorneys
The lawyers for the Dink family had made three demands prior to the hearing:
Arguing that the minutes of the hearing were insufficient to prepare their case, they have requested access to the recording of the hearing. The third hearing of the case was recorded and recording will continue during the case.
Before Hrant Dink was murdered, he was warned by two intelligence officers after being called to the Istanbul governor’s office. The governor’s office has so far refused to identify these officers. In an article entitled “Why I have been chosen as a target”, Dink wrote about his visit to the governor’s office in 2004 and said that two people “warned” him.
It has emerged that suspect Yasin Hayal was being monitored by the police prior to the murder, albeit under suspicion of al Qaida activities. The joint attorneys have demanded that police records be sent to the court so that Hayal’s connections be investigated further.
Court refused most requests
Because gunman suspect O.S. was aged 17 at the time of the murder, the court hearings are closed to the public and the press. Despite a forensic medical report estimating O.S.’s bone age at 19, the court has refused to reconsider his age.
The court has also refused to link the cases of two gendarmerie officers in Samsun and two police officers in Trabzon with the main case, and it refused the demand for questioning of the intelligence officers whose identity the Istanbul governor’s office is protecting.
According to Fethiye Cetin, one of the joint attorneys, the refusal to unite the cases is protecting the criminal organisation behind the murder.
The request of joint attorneys to have access to the CD recordings (audio and visual) of the third hearing on 11 February was also refused by the court.
One request which was granted was that the technical monitoring reports on Yasin Hayal and Mustafa Öztürk, the former leader of the nationalist Alperenler Hearth organisation, will be presented to court.
Four of the suspects who are being tried without detention are members of the Great Union Party (BBP). Yasar Cihan, the then Trabzon province party chair of the BBP, Halis Egemen, member of the party’s central executive board, as well as Erbil Susaman and Osman Alpay, have been relieved of attending further hearings.
Lawyer Cetin criticised the fact that the court has freed four suspects from attending court hearings despite the fact that gendarmerie informant Coskun Igci, Irfan Özkan and Erbil Susaman have not been questioned yet.
Igci has also given a statement in the Trabzon trial against police intelligence officers, saying: “I told them about the murder plans four months earlier.” He is still to be questioned in Istanbul.
At the hearing yesterday, suspects Yasar Cihan, Halis Egemen, Salih Hacisalihoglu, Ersin Yolcu, Ahmet Iskender, Mustafa Öztürk and Alper Esirgemez were cross-examined.
The next hearing in the case is on 28 April. (EÖ/TK/AG)
