TURKISH COURT SENTENCES MAN TO LIFE TERM FOR ROLE IN JOURNALIST KILLING
Voice of America
Jan 17 2012
A Turkish court has sentenced a man to life in prison for masterminding
the killing of an ethnic Armenian journalist five years ago.
In Tuesday’s ruling, the Istanbul court gave Yasin Hayal a life term
for instigating the shooting of Hrant Dink outside his office in
January 2007.
The court also acquitted 19 defendants of charges of being part of
a terrorist group – a ruling denounced by lawyers for Dink’s family,
who say the journalist’s murder was a planned act.
A juvenile court last July sentenced ultranationalist Ogun Samast to
almost 23 years in prison for the assassination of Dink. Authorities
prosecuted Samast as a minor because he was 17 years old at the time
of the attack.
Dink was the chief editor of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly
newspaper Agos when he was assassinated. He had angered Turkish
nationalists by describing the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman
Turks in the early 20th century as a “genocide.”
Turkey rejects the term and says the collapse of the Ottoman Empire
triggered unrest that killed large numbers of Turks as well as
Armenians.
Turkish authorities have prosecuted dozens of people in connection
with Dink’s assassination, including security personnel accused of
ignoring intelligence of ultranationalist plots to kill the journalist.
In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Turkish
authorities failed to protect Dink and ordered the government to pay
compensation to his family.
The European Union has closely followed the Dink case as it underlines
concerns about EU candidate Turkey’s human rights record.