Dink’s Murder Trial Will Be Opened to The Media

The fifth hearing of the Armenian writer-journalist Hrant Dink murder trial is concluded Monday. The court set the next hearing day for July 7.

While the court decided to maintain the existing status of the arrested defendants, it denied the request by the Dink’s lawyers to receive a copy of the visual and audio records of the hearing. The court agreed to hear more than 10 witnesses from Istanbul and Trabzon, whose testimonies may help solve the murder, but four of them could not be reached.

Since he did not have a lawyer, the court could not hear the testimony of the gendarme informant Coşkun İğci who, during his trial at the 2. Criminal Court of Peace in Trabzon, had stated that “I informed the gendarmerie about Yasin Hayal’s murder plans.”  The court decided that he be assigned a lawyer from the bar and heard in the next hearing. Yasin Hayal is indicted with planning Hrant Dink's murder and conscripting gunman O.S. for killing the journalist.

Filing a criminal complaint against Hayal’s lawyer   

Following Hayal’s lawyer Fuat Turgut’s derogatory remarks of “Yohannes Pamukyan,” Dink’s lawyers filed a complaint, claiming that these remarks were meant to target Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel winner Turkish writer, and the Armenian society in a manner that comes under the crime of provoking hatred and animosity among people, as defined by the article 216/2 of  the penal code.

Dink’s lawyers also demanded that the access and the password to the computer used in the prison where Hayal stayed after his bombing of McDonalds in 2004. The lawyers are hoping to determine who visited Hayal while he was in jail. Fethiye Çetin, one of the lawyers of the Dink family, said that their demands were not met fully by Bayrampaşa prison where Hayal had stayed; they were still waiting for a satisfactory reply.

In the afternoon, the defendants İrfan Özkan and Numan Şişman were questioned. When one of Dink’s lawyers Arzu Becerik asked Özkan whether it was true that everyone applauded O.S.’s reply that he could do the murder during the meeting with a group from Istanbul, he answered that it was true, but she needed to ask Ümit (Öksüz) who were present in this meeting.

Çetin made a statement at the end of the hearing

Dink Family lawyer Fethiye Çetin, in  apublic statement she made for the media after the conclusion of the hearing said they were expecting the Istanbul trial combined with the trial in Trabzon, but “this we will know when we receive the replies to the petitions we had given to the İstanbul and Trabzon public prosecutors,”  she concluded.   

Reminded about the claims that the Trabzon Police Department destroyed some of the evidences Çetin said: "There was already information about this matter in the file kept in the Trabzon Police Department. We asked again for this information. Eventually we received the statement that only the information regarding Mustafa Öztürk, the provincial head of Trabzon Alperen Ocakları, was destroyed. Regarding Erhan Tuncel, we communicated our much comprehensive request to the Head of the Intelligence Office of the Police Department. The reply from this department would have been studied by the magistracy and presented to the court, but no result has come from this yet.” 

The surveillance records and the other evidentiary documents that will be received from the Trabzon Police Department and the Public Prosecutor’s Office will help determine those people in the state who may be related to the murder case. (GG)