Lawyers to focus on ‘terror organization’ in Armenian-Turkish journalist Dink case

ISTANBUL – Hürriyet Daily News

‘The Dink case is even more complicated than the Ergenekon [coup plot] case, and that is why it has not been illuminated yet,’ lawyer Cem Halavurt say. DAILY NEWS photo, Emrah GÜREL

The case related to the assassination of Hrant Dink, which is set to restart on Sept. 17, will be more focused on the “terror organization” aspect of the case, one of the Dink family lawyers has said.

Speaking to the Hürriyet Daily News, lawyer Cem Halavurt said they would demand that the “real web of connections” be brought to light. An Istanbul court will begin rehearing the case related to the assassination of Turkish-Armenian journalist Dink, after the Supreme Court of Appeals overturned Yasin Hayal’s acquittal on charges of “being a terrorist organization leader” and finding him guilty of “founding and leading an organization for crime” earlier this year.

“The Dink case is even more complicated than the Ergenekon [coup plot] case, and that is why it has not been illuminated yet,” Halavurt said. “Unless this case is solved, the deep state will not have been unveiled.”

Dink, the renowned editor-in-chief of Agos, was shot in front of his office in Istanbul on Jan. 19, 2007.

The triggerman, Ogün Samast, 17-years-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.” Later, a Supreme Court verdict defined the acts of all suspects in the case under “an organization formed to commit crime” according to Turkish Penal Code Article 220. “The local court ruled there was no criminal organization involved, but the Supreme Court said there was a criminal organization. We have been saying all along that there was an armed terror organization behind this assassination,” the lawyer said. “The court said the suspects committed an act of punishment against Dink as a person, not against the state or the public order. That was why it was not considered a terrorist act. We will try to prove that it was the work of a terror organization.”

Halavurt added that it was impossible to continue the case as it was. He claimed that evidence establishing key links in the murder to retired general Veli Küçük and lawyer Kemal Kerinçsiz, who were both given life sentences in the Ergenekon case, had been deliberately erased by the police department.

“You cannot reach the data with writing petitions to the General Staff, the gendarmerie, the National Intelligence Agency [MİT], or the Trabzon and Istanbul police departments,” he said. “[The court] should order the handing over of the digital systems of those institutions [to unveil the links].” Another lawyer of the Dink family, Fethiye Çetin, is set to release a book on the court process of the Dink case, in which she claims the MİT played a role in the assassination.

Halavurt said that the claims in the book “Utanç Duyuyorum: Hrant Dink Cinayeti Yargısı” (“I Feel Ashamed: The Judgment of the Hrant Dink Murder) that the killing order was given by MİT with an encrypted message, were well established. “Public opinion is aware that the MİT, as an institution, played a role in the Dink murder, and there is evidence in the court files,” he said.