Prosecutor says Ergenekon's Trabzon cell committed Dink murder

Prosecutor Hikmet Usta announced his opinion as to who masterminded the assassination and as to the accusations directed at suspects during the 20th hearing of the 20-suspect Dink trial at the İstanbul 14th High Criminal Court. The prosecutor said the murder was the work of Ergenekon's Trabzon cell and demanded life imprisonment for seven suspects, including key suspects Yasin Hayal and Erhan Tuncel, on charges of attempting to destroy the constitutional order.

“The Dink assassination was the latest assassination of the deep structures. The suspects acted on ideological motives. The target was the Turkish Republic and public order. There is suspicion that the murder is linked to the Ergenekon network. We have reached the conclusion that the Dink murder was committed by the Trabzon cell of the Ergenekon terrorist organization,” Prosecutor Usta said.

Tuncel, a former police informant, is believed to have supplied the hit man with a gun and Hayal is accused of having acted with Tuncel in masterminding the Dink murder. Among other key suspects is Ogün Samast, the ultranationalist teenager who gunned Dink down outside his office in 2007. He was standing trial at the İstanbul 2nd Juvenile Court since he was a minor at the time of the murder. Samast has recently been sentenced to 22 years, 10 months in prison by the court.

Meanwhile, during Monday's hearing, lawyers representing the Dink family said they had reached new and crucial evidence about the murder and requested the prosecutor delay announcing his opinion for further investigation into the newly emerged evidence. However, the prosecutor denied their request and the lawyers left the courtroom in protest.

Dink, the late editor-in-chief of Agos, was shot dead by an ultranationalist teenager outside the offices of his newspaper in broad daylight in İstanbul on Jan. 19, 2007. The investigation into his murder stalled when the suspected perpetrator and his accomplices were put on trial, but those who masterminded the plot to kill him have yet to be exposed and punished.

The investigation that followed Dink's death revealed that the police had been tipped off about plans to murder the journalist. Nineteen suspects are currently facing trial in the murder case. A majority of the suspects, including the hitman, are from Trabzon, where the police say they had informed the İstanbul police about the plot to kill Dink on more than one occasion.

In addition to having ignored the tip-off about the plot, lawyers representing the plaintiff are accusing the police of destroying crucial evidence to protect some of the suspects, among who is an ex-police informant. Lawyers representing the Dink family have long alleged that the murder was the doing of Ergenekon, a clandestine gang with members nested within the state hierarchy who are currently on trial for attempting to overthrow the government by force.

Ergenekon is accused of being behind many atrocious crimes and plots that sought to create chaos in Turkey, with the intent of triggering a military takeover. The Dink family's lawyers earlier demanded that the court investigate whether Dink's killing was part of the Cage plan, an alleged military plot of Ergenekon exposed by the Taraf daily in 2009. The plan mostly focused on killing non-Muslims and other religious targets to create turmoil that would eventually help the plotters take over the government. The Cage plan calls the killings of Dink, Catholic priest Father Andrea Santoro and three Christians in Malatya an “operation.”

In June, the Trabzon 2nd Criminal Court of Peace convicted six of eight suspects in a negligence case over the prevention of Dink's murder, a rare positive development since the start of the trial four years ago. The court handed down prison sentences of six months each for Trabzon army commander Col. Ali Öz and army intelligence unit director Capt. Metin Yıldız.

In this regard, the Dink family's lawyers say that although the decision was welcome, it was unlikely to be a groundbreaking ruling in the course of the main trial in İstanbul. They had demanded the prison sentences be based on accomplice charges and that the military men be tried in the İstanbul court as primary suspects.