Turkish court arrests two former intelligence officers who knew about plot to murder Hrant Dink

An Istanbul court on Jan. 6 ordered the arrest of two former gendarmerie intelligence officers for not reporting about plans to kill Hrant Dink, the Armenian-Turkish editor of the weekly Agos, prior to his murder in 2007.

Wednesday January 06 2021 06:00 pm

Duvar English

An Istanbul court on Jan. 6 ordered that two former gendarmerie intelligence officers be remanded in custody over the 2007 killing of prominent Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink, state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

The Istanbul 14th Heavy Penal Court found Volkan Şahin and Veysal Şahin, who were working for Trabzon gendarmerie intelligence office at the time of Dink's murder, guilty of knowing the assassination beforehand.

Trabzon is the city where most of the people on trial for Dink's murder are from.

Citing evidence against the two, the court ordered that arrest warrants be issued to nab Volkan Şahin and Veysal Şahin as "they spent a short time under detention."

The next hearing of the case will be held on Jan. 8.

Dink was shot dead in 2007 on Halaskargazi Street, in the Şişli district of Istanbul, where the headquarters of the Turkish-Armenian weekly newspaper Agos are located.

Ogün Samast, then a 17-year old jobless high school dropout, confessed to the killing and was sentenced to almost 23 years in jail back in 2011.

The case grew into a wider scandal after it emerged that security forces had been aware of a plot to kill Dink but failed to take action against it.

Thirteen years after Dink's assassination, the trial of several people accused of involvement in the murder, including government security officials, is still dragging on.

A 2017 indictment accused the police officers and intelligent agency now on trial of neglect of duty, destroying evidence and other offenses. A total of 76 suspects, four of whom are jailed and 13 are fugitives, are on trial as part of the case.