ECHR Asks: Why Did You Not Protect Hrant Dink?

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has received five applications related to the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, the editor of the weekly Agos newspaper, in January 2007.

Having merged applications which were made at different times, the court is now asking Turkey questions, to which it wants answers by November.

Lawyer Deniz Tuna of the International Hrant Dink Foundation told bianet that the applications were related to parts of the European Convention on Human Rights concerned with the violation of the right to life, the right to an effective application to court, the right to a fair trial, the right to freedom of expression and the ban on discrimination.

One application by Dink himself

Hrant Dink had appealed to the ECHR two weeks before he was killed in relation to a six-month deferred prison sentence he had received under Article 159 of the Turkish Penal Code for a series of articles entitled "Armenian Identity".

Following his murder, lawyers for his family had appealed to the ECHR when the Trabzon police and gendarmerie and the Istanbul police were not taken to court although they were accused of having been negligent in evaluating intelligence on murder plans.

Another application relates to the lack of punishment for Samsun police officers who took "souvenir shots" with the suspected gunman Ogün Samast after catching him at the Samsun bus station a day after the murder.

Evidence of serious negligence

The Prime Ministerial Review Committee had pointed to a "serious lack of coordination" in the sharing of intelligence between security institutes prior to the murder. Nevertheless, no public official is being tried in the main murder case heard at the Istanbul 14th Heavy Penal Court.

Police Intelligence Head Ramazan Akyürek, Istanbul Chief of Police Celalettin Cerrah and Ahmet İlhan Güler from the Istanbul Intelligence Unit, as well as other officials, were never brought to court.

Rather, 18 young men, most from the Pelitli town in Trabzon province, are on trial for the murder, as well as Coşkun İğci, a gendarmerie informant who claims that he notified the officials of murder plans, and Osman Hayal, brother of suspect Yasin Hayal. Osman Hayal has been found to have been in Istanbul on the day of the murder, a fact which he denied for a long time.

The tenth hearing of the main murder trial is on 6 July.

Gendarmerie officers in separate case

Eight gendarmerie officers are on trial for negligence in not having evaluated the intelligence. However, they only face up to two years imprisonment. Their trial continues on 24 July.

Lawyers for the Dink family have long called for the cases to be merged, as it was the neglect of the officers which led to the death of Hrant Dink. (EÖ/AG)