LAWYER CETIN: EVIDENCE STILL COVERED UP FIVE YEARS AFTER DINK MURDER
Today’s Zaman
Jan 11 2012
Turkey
Five years after the assassination of journalist Hrant Dink, evidence
related to the real perpetrators of the crime is still being covered
up, the Dink family’s lawyer, Fethiye Cetin, who has been the chief
attorney in the case, has said.
“Long ago, in 2008, we demanded the records of phone calls made in
the vicinity of the assassination on the day of the murder. We were
only able to have those records in court recently, a week before
the case is going to be closed! Moreover, police provided misleading
information to the court about the phone records,” Cetin told Today’s
Zaman following the 24th hearing of the trial, which took place on
Monday at the Ä°stanbul 14th High Criminal Court.
The late editor-in-chief of the Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, Dink
was shot dead by an ultranationalist teenager outside the offices of
his newspaper in broad daylight in Ä°stanbul on Jan. 19, 2007. The
investigation into his murder stalled as the suspected perpetrator
and his accomplices were put on trial, but those who masterminded
the plot to kill him have yet to be exposed and punished.
Cetin said that contrary to the police investigation, which found no
phone conversations among the suspects on the day of the murder, the
Dink family attorneys found with their limited resources at least five
cell phone numbers belonging to people who were present at the crime
scene on the day of the murder that were directly connected to Mustafa
Ozturk and Sahil Hacısalihoglu, two suspects in the investigation.
The Telecommunications Directorate (TÄ°B) told the court that 6,235
phone conversations took place in the vicinity at the time of the
murder and that 9,300 people were carrying cell phones in the area. It
also said their records showed no link to any of the cell phones.
“TÄ°B’s statement is not true,” Cetin said, adding that one of the
numbers assigned to a cell phone present in the area at the time of
the murder was used in 19 calls to suspect Mustafa Ozturk between the
dates Oct. 22, 2005 — about two years prior to the murder — and Jan.
27, 2007.
She accused the Ä°stanbul Police Department of misleading judicial
institutions, obscuring evidence and attempting to keep the truth
from coming out.
This is not the first time the Dink family lawyers have discovered
information that appears to have been secretly held from the
prosecution and the court. A lengthy list of suspicious irregularities
in the Dink murder investigation, including deleted records and
hidden files, suggestive of a police cover-up attempt, has marred the
judicial process. Much of the evidence has indicated that the murder
could have been prevented.
Since the day of the murder, mounting evidence has indicated that the
police were tipped off about the assassination plot some months before
the actual attack. Ä°stanbul’s police chief has also acknowledged
that there was a tip-off about a possible attack on Dink, but said
its priority level was too low for his department to take it seriously.
More dishearteningly, links between the police and the suspects
have been revealed. For example, Erhan Tuncel, a key suspect in
the murder, was previously a police informant. Although Tuncel is
suspected of having incited Dink’s murderer, he is also said to
be the one who tipped off the Ä°stanbul police. Important evidence,
including Tuncel’s police records, was hidden from the court. In fact,
Tuncel’s file with the police was destroyed, since it constitutes a
“state secret,” according to officials.
The investigation has yielded more evidence linking the masterminds
of the murder plot to the police force in Ä°stanbul and Trabzon, the
hometown of most of the suspects and the place where the assassination
was planned, and in Ankara, where the police were in possession of
intelligence about the murder.
The intention to obscure crucial evidence was not limited to hiding or
destroying files on the suspects, the Dink family lawyers say. Footage
from active security cameras at shops and banks located close to the
crime scene was also mysteriously lost. These recordings would have
been invaluable in identifying those associated with the murderer on
the day of the assassination.
Asked about what she expects out of the court’s judgment next week when
it is likely to end the case, Cetin said they demand life sentences
with no possibility of parole for the instigators of the murder.
“It is up to the court to rule. The court is willing to reach a
judgment soon because of a possibility of discharge since the suspects
have been on trial for almost five years now,” she said.
Meanwhile, Yasin Hayal, accused of having solicited Dink’s shooter,
Ogun Samast, to carry out the murder, told the court on Monday once
more that he was used by the state to carry out the murder but now
claims that the same state is trying to get rid of him.
Upon Hayal’s claims, Cetin asked him during the hearing who those
people were using Hayal. Hayal repeated his previous claims that
these people were Tuncel and Ramazan Akyurek, head of the National
Police Department’s intelligence unit.
Cetin repeated that they had asked the court to summon several
witnesses to court in order to uncover the truth, but their demands
were rejected. Those officials included Celalettin Cerrah, head
of the Ä°stanbul Police Department at the time; Ahmet Ä°lhan Guler,
director of the Ä°stanbul intelligence unit at the time; ReÅ~_at Altay,
director of the Trabzon Police Department at the time; and Akyurek.
According to the Dink family’s lawyers, bureaucracy and institutions
resist solving the murder in its entirety because there is a lack of
political will to move the investigation along.
After the finalization of the case by the Ä°stanbul 14th High Criminal
Court, the Dink case is supposed to go to the Supreme Court of Appeals.
“The Ä°stanbul court demanded the prosecution examine the TÄ°B records
more thoroughly. If there is new evidence, the case could be reopened
with an additional indictment,” Cetin said.