Turkish prosecutors on Thursday appealed a court order for the release of suspects in the 2007 murder of Hrant Dink, a prominent Armenian-Turkish journalist, local sources reported. To remind, early Thursday, an Istanbul High Criminal Court ordered the conditional release of two suspects in the murder.
Ercan Gun and Muharrem Demirkale were released with a travel ban abroad, while the court ordered the continued detention of Ramazan Akyurek and Ali Fuat Yilmazer. They are all charged with premeditated murder and attempting to overthrow the constitutional order.
Dink, the editor-in-chief of the Istanbul-based Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, was shot dead at the age of 52 in broad daylight by an ultranationalist outside his office in central Istanbul on January 19, 2007. In 2011, Ogun Samast was sentenced to 23 years in prison for the killing. Samast, who was 17 years old in early 2007, claimed he killed Dink for “insulting Turkishness.”
Although Samast is the only person to be jailed for the murder, speculation on the involvement of others has persisted.
