SENIOR TURKISH POLICEMAN DISMISSED OVER JOURNALIST’S MURDER
Agence France Presse — English
February 6, 2007 Tuesday 8:17 AM GMT
A senior police chief in Istanbul has been sacked amid allegations
that the security forces failed to follow up on a tip-off last
year about a plot to kill ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink,
an interior ministry official said Tuesday.
Ahmet Ilhan Guler, head of the Istanbul police’s intelligence
department, was dismissed on the demand of inspectors investigating
whether police were responsible for any negligence in Dink’s killing
in Istanbul on January 19, the official told AFP on the condition
of anonymity.
The inspectors have not yet finished their report, he added.
A 17-year-old youth from the northern city of Trabzon, Ogun Samast,
has confessed to murdering Dink, 52, one of Turkey’s most prominent
ethnic Armenians who was hated by nationalists for calling the
massacres of Armenians under the Ottoman Empire genocide.
Seven other suspects, all from Trabzon, have been arrested in the
probe.
Among them is Yasin Hayal, 26, who served 11 months in jail for a 2004
bomb blast outside a McDonald’s restaurant in Trabzon and allegedly
gave Samast money and a gun to kill Dink.
Media reports have said that the Istanbul police received a tip-off
from their colleagues in Trabzon last year that Hayal was plotting
to kill Dink, but did not follow up on the intelligence.
Trabzon’s governor and police chief were also removed from office
amid accusations that they failed to seriously investigate groups
of youths under the sway of ultra-nationalist and Islamist ideas,
especially after a 16-year-old boy killed an Italian Catholic priest
in the city last year.
The probe into Dink’s murder has proved a serious embarrassment for
the Turkish security forces.
Ten members of the police and a paramilitary force have been dismissed
from their posts in the northern city of Samsun, where Samast was
arrested on January 20, after a video was leaked to the media last
week showing security forces posing with the alleged assailant for
"souvenir pictures".
The police are also under fire for failing to grant Dink special
protection, even though the journalist mentioned in articles in his
bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos that he was receiving threats
and hate mail.