ISTANBUL (PanArmenian.net) — The trial for the murder of Armenian-Turkish journalist, Agos weekly editor-in-chief Hrant Dink restarted on September 17, following an overturn of the first verdict due to the victim’s family protest of the trial.
“As the Dink family, we will no longer be tools to the state mechanisms that have been mocking us and we will not attend the hearings of the retrial,” the Dink family said in a statement issued before the trial. “The crime coalition that is called ‘the state’ recommitted the murder in every hearing, every day while it showed itself as if seeking for justice. That coalition is the crime gang itself that planned the murder and then covered it up,” the family’s letter said.
In today’s hearing, the court issued an arrest warrant for Erhan Tuncel, a former police informant and suspect in the murder case who was released after the first verdict.
Tuncel is seen as a key in linking the murder to the state institutions as members of the Police Department in the Black Sea province of Trabzon, the suspects’ hometown, have been accused of failing to relay intelligence provided by Tuncel to the Trabzon Gendarmerie Command in a report prepared by Turkey’s State Supervisory Council (DDK).
Dink was shot in front of his office on January 19, 2007.
The triggerman, Ogün Samast, a 17-year-old at the time of the murder, and Yasin Hayal, who was charged of being the instigator of the assassination, were convicted of the murder. However, a high criminal court dismissed charges related to “armed terrorist organization.” The Supreme Court of Appeals verdict defined the acts of all suspects in the case under “an organization formed to commit crime” according to Turkish Penal Code Article 220.