Suspect faces up to 26 years in jail for threatening Hrant Dink foundation

Duvar English

Suspect arrested over issuing death threat to Hrant Dink Foundation

One of the suspects who made death threats to the foundation of slain Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink faces 26 years and 3 months in prison, while eight years and nine months is sought for another.

Arrested on May 31 and June 2, suspects Hüseyin Ateş and Ersin Başkan were charged with making death threats after the emails to the Hrant Dink Foundation were traced back to them.

“The email included the phrase ‘We may turn up one night, when you least expect it’, a slogan used boastfully in certain circles, and the very same slogan we were well used to hearing before Hrant Dink was so publicly assassinated, and with the knowledge of official bodies, on 19 January 2007. The threat accuses the Hrant Dink Foundation of telling ‘tales of fraternity’, demands us to leave the country and threatens Rakel Dink [Hrant Dink's wife] and the foundation’s lawyer with death,” the foundation said in a statement.

13 years on, impunity lingers in Armenian-Turkish journalist murder case

Shot dead in front of the Armenian-Turkish daily Agos where he worked in 2007, Dink was outspoken about the Armenian Genocide, for which he was prosecuted a number of times under the Turkish penal code for “denigrating Turkey” and “insulting Turkish identity.”

As the case into Dink's death deepened, it turned into a wider scandal symbolizing police inefficiency, conspiracies about the "deep government" that plotted the murder along with the assailants and radical nationalism.

The death threats to the foundation closely followed attacks on two Armenian churches in Istanbul.

Cross ripped off from Armenian church in Istanbul