Detention Warrants Issued For 9 Police Officials In Probe Into Dink Murder

Detention warrants have been issued for nine police officials as part of an investigation carried out into the 2007 killing of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

The İstanbul Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office issued the warrants on Tuesday.

Dink was shot by a 17-year-old boy, Ogün Samast, on Jan. 19, 2007, in front of the Agos office, where he served as editor-in-chief. In January 2012, Samast was sentenced to 22 years, 10 months in prison by a juvenile court while a court ruled on life imprisonment for Yasin Hayal on charges of instigating the murder. Another suspect, erhan tuncel, was acquitted of murder charges.

In May 2013, the Supreme Court of Appeals overturned the court's original ruling, which dismissed the existence of an organized criminal network in the case. The lower court, which found no evidence that a terrorist organization was involved in Samast's assassination of Dink in 2007, had acquitted the suspects of claims that they had formed a terrorist organization. The court did, however, say they were guilty of forming an illegal and armed organization to commit a crime, prohibited under Article 220 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK).

This decision paved the way for the trial of public officials on charges of voluntary manslaughter and the retrial started in September 2014.

Evidence discovered since then has led to claims that the murder was linked to the “deep state,” a term that refers to a shadowy group of military and civilian bureaucrats in Turkey believed to have links with organized crime. (Cihan/Today's Zaman)