HRANT DINK MURDER

The report of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) on footage of the murder of Hrant Dink supposedly recorded by a camera of a local Akbank branch turned out to be "incomprehensible". According to the report, the data was both deleted and not deleted.

Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was gunned down in front of his office in Şişli/Istanbul in 2007. He was Editor-in-Chief of the Armenian Agos newspaper at the time.

Plaintiff lawyer Cem Halavurt announced that the report was forwarded to IT experts and that a decision would be prepared according to their findings.

Halayurt told bianet that the report was incomprehensible. "It seems to clash with the reports we obtained from abroad. We will also have the records reviewed by electric and electronic departments of universities if necessary".

On 19 January 2007, the day Dink was assassinated, the records of the local Akbank branch right next to the office of the Agos newspaper were seized by the police. At the hearing of the "Dink murder case" on 10 May 2010, the Istanbul 14^th High Criminal Court decided to send the Akbank hard disc to TÜBİTAK.

One year later, TÜBİTAK sent a report to court that comprised four pages including attachments.

Incomprehensible wording

As reported by Vatan newspaper, TÜBİTAK prepared a report on the digital forensic analysis of three hard disks with the serial numbers "Y32B3STE", "Y3KSS5CE" and "Y3PE36HE". As a result, the research council stated that 'deleted video files could not be determined'.

However, in the report it is also claimed that the file "MonitorCheck.tmp" was deleted from hard disk "Y32B3STE". The latter file was part of a file labelled "Akbank_pangaalt1_sb(h.dink).E01". Regarding the file described as "Akbank_pangaalt1_sb(h.dink).E01/Partition1/NewVolume[NTFS]/[root]MonitorCheck.tmp", the TÜBİTAK report does not give any information by whom it was labelled and at what time.

The 17^th hearing of the Hrant Dink murder case will be held on coming Monday (28 March) at the Beşiktaş Courthouse in Istanbul. (NV/EÖ/VK)