ECHR RECEIVED FIVE APPLICATIONS RELATED TO THE MURDER OF DINK
/PanARMENIAN.Net/
20.06.2009 00:44 GMT+04:00
/PanARMENIAN.Net/ The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has
received five applications related to the murder of Turkish-Armenian
journalist Hrant Dink, the editor of the weekly Agos newspaper,
in January 2007.
Lawyer Deniz Tuna of the International Hrant Dink Foundation told,
that the applications were related to parts of the European Convention
on Human Rights concerned with the violation of the right to life, the
right to an effective application to court, the right to a fair trial,
the right to freedom of expression and the ban on discrimination,
bianet reports.
Hrant Dink had appealed to the ECHR two weeks before he was killed
in relation to a six-month deferred prison sentence he had received
under Article 159 of the Turkish Penal Code for a series of articles
entitled "Armenian Identity".
Following his murder, lawyers for his family had appealed to the ECHR
when the Trabzon police and gendarmerie and the Istanbul police were
not taken to court although they were accused of having been negligent
in evaluating intelligence on murder plans.
Another application relates to the lack of punishment for Samsun
police officers who took "souvenir shots" with the suspected gunman
Ogun Samast after catching him at the Samsun bus station a day after
the murder.
The Prime Ministerial Review Committee had pointed to a "serious
lack of coordination" in the sharing of intelligence between security
institutes prior to the murder. Nevertheless, no public official is
being tried in the main murder case heard at the Istanbul 14th Heavy
Penal Court.
Police Intelligence Head Ramazan Akyurek, Istanbul Chief of Police
Celalettin Cerrah and Ahmet Ýlhan Guler from the Istanbul Intelligence
Unit, as well as other officials, were never brought to court.
Rather, 18 young men, most from the Pelitli town in Trabzon province,
are on trial for the murder, as well as Coþkun Ýðci, a gendarmerie
informant who claims that he notified the officials of murder plans,
and Osman Hayal, brother of suspect Yasin Hayal. Osman Hayal has been
found to have been in Istanbul on the day of the murder, a fact which
he denied for a long time.
The tenth hearing of the main murder trial is on 6 July.
Eight gendarmerie officers are on trial for negligence in not having
evaluated the intelligence. However, they only face up to two years
imprisonment. Their trial continues on 24 July.
Lawyers for the Dink family have long called for the cases to be
merged, as it was the neglect of the officers which led to the death
of Hrant Dink.