After the first hearing on Monday (2 July), lawyer Fethiye Cetin said at the meeting yesterday (3 July), "yesterday's hearing shows that those responsible are not at all limited to those brought to trial".
All those responsible need to be tried
Cetin reiterated that all the gendarmerie and police officers who had relations with the suspects and who, despite receiving information on the planned murder, did not take precautions, needed to be tried under Article 83 for "execution and negligence".
She announced that the initial demand for all those responsible in Trabzon, Ankara and Istanbul to be tried had been refused in the investigation period, but that these demands were repeated during the first hearing and partially accepted.
The joint party attorneys said that they were continuing their endeavours to collect evidence, but that this was actually the duty of the investigating prosecutors.
Cetin argued that with the statements of the suspects, state involvement had become clear. "This case cannot end like this. We cannot proceed with the decisions the prosecution has taken about the responsible gendarmerie and police officers."
Sympathy for the murder suspect
Complaints against several security institutions have not been followed up: the security officers in Samsun, who, instead of questioning him, took souvenir pictures with suspected gunman O.S., the police officers in Trabzon who were in contact with the suspects, and the Ankara Intelligence Department and the Istanbul Police Headquarters, who, despite being notified of the murder plans by Trabzon, did not act.
As far as Samsun is concerned, permission has only been given for two people to be tried. Of the 21 officers who, after O.S. was caught in Samsun in the evening of 20 January, took pictures of him, only the person who leaked the pictures to the press and the acting director of the Terrorism Branch, who held O.S. in a tea room instead of in jail, are to be tried.
The Samsun prosecution said that "there was a kind of sympathy for the murder suspect. This is not a crime, but it can lead to a disciplinary investigation".
In Trabzon, joint attorneys had objected to the fact that only two gendarmerie officers were going to be tried. Their appeal was squashed by both the administrative court and the regional administrative court.
Court has demanded recordings and documents
After the first hearing, the court has decided to meet certain demands:
* At the time of a conference organised at Bilgi University (İstanbul), an article in Hrant Dink's "Agos" newspaper claimed that Turkey's first woman pilot, Sabiha Gökcen, was Armenian. In reaction to this, there were protesters in front of the Agos newspaper office. There were also always protestors in front of the court where Hrant Dink was being tried. The court has agreed to demand video recordings of these activities from the authorities.
* It has also been decided to request the records which had been sent to Istanbul by the Ankara Intelligence Department, but which had been destroyed.
* Joint attorneys will be given access to all video and telephone recordings which the Istanbul Office of Public Prosecutions is holding.
* In 2004, Hrant Dink had been called to the Istanbul governor's office and had been warned by the vice governor, Erol Güngör, and two intelligence officers he introduced as "people close to me". The court has decided to demand that the names of these two intelligence officers are given to the court.
After Hrant Dink's murder and public reactions to this "warning", the governor's office had stated, "there was no question of threatening [him], but it was a case of a well-intentioned warning against becoming a target of those who were unhappy with his ideas".
The trial is to continue on 1 October. (EÖ/EÜ)
