POSSIBLE NEW WITNESS IN TURKEY’S DINK MURDER TRIAL
Hurriyet
Feb 28 2011
Turkey
Ogun Samast is facing his first hearing in a juvenile court.
A juvenile court in Istanbul began hearing a case Monday against
the alleged killer of Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink as
evidence emerged in the main case of a potential new witness to the
2007 slaying.
The hearing at the 14th Minors Court for Serious Crimes was the first
since the trial against alleged triggerman Ogun Samast was transferred
from an adult to juvenile court.
A wiretapped conversation revealed during a recent hearing into the
Ergenekon coup plot case meanwhile indicated that there were two
people next to Samast on the day of Dink’s assassination.
This witness was not listed in the scope of the Dink murder trial. It
has been claimed that Samast was not alone on the day of the killing,
but that has never been confirmed.
The Istanbul court decided Monday that Dink’s family members – his
wife, Rakel, daughters Delal and Sera, son Arat and brothers Hosrof and
Yervant Dink – as well as the newspaper he edited, weekly Agos, and
Birgun Publishing were also parties to the case, each represented by
their lawyers. The defendant’s lawyer argued that the “legal persons”
and people with no blood relation to Dink should not have been accepted
as parties to the case.
After Celal Unal, the chair of the juvenile court board, read a short
summary of the formal criminal charge, the defendant was asked whether
he had anything to say. “I made my defense four years ago. I repeat
the same [defense],” Samast said.
Dink family lawyer Fethiye Cetin told a group of journalists that his
relatives would no longer be following the case in the courts. “The
moves and course [of judgment] have been far from what justice
demands,” Cetin said, adding that the case has caused a lot of
suffering and inflamed public opinion.
Possible new witness
The claim of a possible new witness arose during the last hearing of
the second Ergenekon case on Feb. 25. While suspect retired Lt. Col.
Mustafa Dönmez was being cross-examined, he was asked about a
phone call in the indictment. Dönmez allegedly made a phone call
to Emin Gurses from EskiÅ~_ehir on the Dink murder as well as other
criminal offenses in the indictment. “They are conversations we made
on the matters of the country on the spur of the moment,” the retired
officer said.
Prosecutor Aykut Cenciz Engin reportedly arrived at the courthouse
in the early morning hours to do some inspections within the building.
The press has been taken within the courtroom only a while after the
case had started. Samast has reportedly asked judges for the number
of the case observers to be decreased, or for the hearing to be closed
to public, which has been strictly objected by Dink family.
The court board has reportedly referred to Samast as SSC, which is
the acronym for “minor dragged to crime” during the hearing.
The Istanbul court, where main suspect Ogun Samast had been on trial
for Dink’s murder together with another 20 suspects including Erhan
Tuncel and Yasin Hayal, ruled Oct. 25 that it did not have jurisdiction
to prosecute Samast because he was under the age of 18 at the time of
the murder. The unanimous decision was made under a recently changed on
minors’ legal status in adult courts. The change to what is commonly
known as the “stone-throwing children’s law” was meant to ease the
plight of juveniles charged under Turkey’s anti-terrorism laws.
From: A. Papazian