Bloomberg
Jan 21 2007
Turkish Police Arrest Suspect in the Murder of Journalist Dink
By Ayla Jean Yackley
Jan. 21 (Bloomberg) — Turkish police arrested a 17-year-old male on
suspicion of killing the Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink in a
shooting that prompted thousands of people to march in protest
through the streets of Istanbul.
Ogun Samast was detained late yesterday in the Black Sea town of
Samsun, carrying the gun police believe he used to shoot Dink, said a
statement on the Istanbul Police Directorate’s Web site. He is being
held for questioning in Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city, said a
police spokesman on condition of anonymity.
Dink, 53, was shot three times in the head and neck outside of his
newspaper’s offices in central Istanbul on Jan. 19. He was the editor
of Agos, a weekly newspaper for the Armenian community, and was one
of the Armenian community’s most prominent members.
Dink had been convicted of “insulting Turkishness” and received a
six-month suspended prison term in July for a 2004 article he wrote
about the massacre of Armenians by Ottoman Turkish troops during
World War One. At the time of his death he was being prosecuted again
for similar comments.
Turkey denies the killing of Armenians from 1915 was genocide and has
prosecuted other writers, academics and historians for criticizing
this stance. Orhan Pamuk, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in
2006, was tried and acquitted last year under the same charges as
Dink. Pamuk is now under police protection, Milliyet newspaper said
today, citing an order from Istanbul Police Chief Celalettin Cerrah.
EU Pressure
The European Union, which Turkey aspires to join, has said the
government must abolish laws curbing free speech to meet European
standards on human rights. Several European leaders have also called
on Turkey to recognize that the Armenian massacres by Ottoman Turks
amounted to genocide.
As many as 10,000 people marched to protest Dink’s killing, and
dozens of people continue to visit the scene of the murder, leaving
flowers and portraits of the journalist. About 60,000 Turkish
citizens of Armenian descent live in Istanbul, and an estimated
100,000 Armenian nationals reside in Turkey.
The suspect’s father, Ahmet Samast, alerted police to his son after
recognizing him in a security camera picture that authorities
distributed to news organizations, Milliyet said. Ogun Samast fled
Istanbul on a bus after the slaying and was attempting to return to
his hometown of Trabzon when he was apprehended in Samsun, the
newspaper said.
Samast told police he was given the gun and ordered to kill Dink by a
friend who had been convicted for the 2004 bombing of a McDonald’s
Corp. restaurant in Trabzon that wounded six people, Milliyet said.
Police have detained the friend, who served 11 months in prison for
the bombing, as well as Ahmet Samast and the relatives with whom
Samast stayed in Istanbul, Milliyet said.
Trabzon was the site of the murder of Roman Catholic priest Andrea
Santoro, an Italian, in February 2006. A 17-year-old male was
sentenced to 18 years in prison for that shooting. Only about 100,000
Christians remain in Turkey, whose population of 70 million people is
99.9 percent Muslim.