Police Officer’s Court Case against Bianet Continues

Police officer Muhittin Zenit came to public notice after it emerged that he had spoken with murder suspect Erhan Tuncel hours after the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

In the telephone conversation, he said to 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.”

Now Zenit, then intelligence officer with the Trabzon police force, is demanding 25,000 TL (around 12,500 Euros) compensation from bianet.

He filed a complaint against bianet for an article entitled “It was clear how he was going to be shot”, published 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.

The case is being heard at the Ankara 25th Civil Court of First Instance.

Önder Özsoy, lawyer for Zenit, told the court at a hearing on Tuesday (5 May) that the police department had filed a criminal complaint against bianet.org for these publications.

He demanded that a copy of the balance sheet of the IPS Communication Foundation, which runs the BİA project, be included in the file. Turan Şat, lawyer for the İPS Communication Foundation, demanded that the court reject the complaint.

However, leading judge Ömer Kızılkaya decided to write to the Beyoğlu police department to obtain a copy of the latest balance sheet in order to investigate the foundation’s finances.

In addition, the court decided to ask the Police General Directorate whether they had filed a criminal complaint about the publications, and, if they had, at which stage the investigation was, whether the case had gone to trial. If it had gone to trial, the court decreed that a notification and a copy of the criminal complaint be sent to the court.

The next hearing is on 24 June.

The court rejected the application by foundation lawyer Mustafa Bayram Mısır to drop the case because the IPS Communication Foundation could not be held responsible for the publications.

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 from 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.

Zenit has also brought a case against NTV. He is demanding 90,000 TL in compensation. That case is being heard by the Ankara 1st Civil Court of First Instance. (EÖ/AG)