ISTANBUL: A court in Istanbul began a retrial yesterday over the murder of an ethnic Armenian journalist.
Hrant Dink, who incurred the wrath of Turkish nationalists for calling the World War I massacre of Armenians a genocide, was shot dead in broad daylight in 2007 outside the offices of his bilingual weekly newspaper Agos.
The killing of the 52-year-old sent shock waves across Turkey and triggered a wider scandal after reports that state security forces had known of the murder plot but failed to act.
An Istanbul court in 2011 sentenced Dink’s self-confessed killer Ogun Samast to 23 years in jail. He was tried as a juvenile as he was only 17 at the time of the murder.
A year later, the court sentenced the so-called mastermind of the murder, Yasin Hayal, to life in prison for inciting the killing but acquitted 18 defendants, ruling that there was no conspiracy.
In May, Turkey’s appeals court ordered a retrial to look into whether he and another 18 acquitted defendants belonged to a criminal network.
Hayal and another seven of the defendants are being retried.
AFP
