Almost 4 Years Later: Still No Closure on Dink Case

The Istanbul 14th High Criminal Court decided to prosecute prime suspect Ogün Samast before a juvenile court. This is one of the results of Monday’s hearing of the Hrant Dink murder case. The Turkish-Armenian journalist, then editor-in-chief of the bilingual Armenian-Turkish Agos newspaper, was shot in front of his office in 2007, reports BIA News Center.

Amendments on the Anti-Terror Law enforced in June lifted the provision that juveniles older than 15 years of age should be prosecuted as adults.

Samast benefited from this amendment that was particularly related to children from mainly Kurdish regions who stood trial under charges of attending demonstrations. The decision was given in the beginning of the morning session. The High Criminal Court’s decision was in line with the opinion of prosecutor Mustafa Çavuşoğlu. Subsequently, Samast was excluded from the hearing and taken to the Istanbul Sultanahmet Juvenile High Criminal Court.

Samast was 17 years old when he allegedly shot Hrant Dink in front of the Agos newspaper office in the middle of the day on January 19, 2007. The prosecutor in the Dink case had asked for 29 years imprisonment for Samast; however, juvenile court cases allow for a maximum of 26.5 years for minors. Thus with this change, the defendant can ask the sentence to be dropped to the maximum for minors.

During the intermission after the morning session on October 25, Dink’s widow Rakel Dink criticized the decision, “The justice is put into iron chains by the laws. And the judges behave accordingly.”

Hosrof Dink, brother of the slain journalist, pointed out, “We would not have been confronted with this if justice had been delivered in time. It has been four years. We remind you of your responsibilities”.

One of the international observers who attended the hearing in the Beşiktaş (Istanbul) Court House was Olivier Guilbaud from the delegation of the Paris Bar Association. 

“We hope that the court will recognize all aspects highlighted by the decision of the ECHR [European Court of Human Rights].

“We would appreciate the court’s acceptance of the request made by the joint attorneys of the plaintiff party to merge the file tried in Trabzon [with the case file in Istanbul]. We also hope that the fact that Samast will be tried at a Juvenile Court will not prevent the disclosure of all aspects of the truth behind the murder in any way,” Guilbaud said.