Lawyer of weekly Agos Deniz Tuna announces that the courts are moving slowly against the death threats, insults and racist e-mails against the newspaper and therefore do not deter the perpetrators.

Tuna says that even though they brought these attacks that have been coming after Hrant Dink was murdered on January 19, 2007 to the Şişli Prosecutor’s Office in the form of 19 criminal complaints, the lawsuits have still not been filed. They are still investigating the complaints, while we are receiving information that the said crimes were committed in the internet cafes.

“Investigating and prosecuting the threats take too long”

Tuna says since there is not a special office for the internet crimes, the investigations take too long and since these kinds of crimes can be repeated easily, slowly moving prosecutions do not deter the perpetrators at all.

Although they have informed Istanbul’s 14th High Criminal Court of the attacks in order that they can be investigated for possible connections with Dink’s murder, the courts’ not taking into consideration the racist nature of these attacks is another problem, in addition to the slow investigations.

Tuna says that article 216 of  “provoking hatred and hostility” should be implemented in this case.

 “The world is discussing something called hatred discourse. If there was one threat, it would probably not matter. But when the crime is committed with a racist motive then the identity targeted by the racist attacks takes on a different meaning. It becomes a threat directed at the whole society.”

“Racism should be brought up and investigated from this perspective. It should not only be seen as an aggravating circumstance, but declared a crime in itself. These kinds of attacks should be taken as two separate crimes of threat and racism. The prosecutors have not prepared an indictment that would satisfy this.”

The court punished the two threats, but did not see “racism”

Tuna said that they managed to get convictions from two courts for two complaints before, but neither of them looked at the problem from the perspective of racism.

On March 20, 2008, the 9th Criminal Court First Instance sentenced Zafer Filiz to three years in prison for sending a racist e-mail threat to Agos twelve days after Hrant Dink’s murder.

On October 2007, the same court had sentenced 19 year old Rıdvan Doğan to two years in prison for sending Agos a threat message. (EÖ/TB)