The Prime Ministry Inspection Board had requested that the Interior Ministry investigate 19 police officers working at the Trabzon Police Station and the National Police Department’s intelligence unit following the filing of a request by Dink’s wife, Rakel Dink, who accused the officers of negligence egregious enough to allow the assassination to take place. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also requested that the charges be looked into. The Inspection Board decided that there was a “possibility” that the police -- including former intelligence unit heads Ramazan Akyürek and Sabri Uzun, former intelligence unit deputy chiefs Necmettin Emre and Vedat Yavuz and former Trabzon Police Chief Reşat Altay -- had demonstrated negligence and so requested that the Interior Ministry investigate. Ministry investigators drafted a report upon the conclusion of their probe, saying that the 19 officers named were not criminally negligent in connection to the murder.
The Armenian-Turkish Hrant Dink was editor-in-chief of the bilingual Agos daily until he was killed on Jan. 19, 2007.
Lawyers representing the co-plaintiffs in the Dink trial have long alleged that the murder was the doing of Ergenekon, a clandestine group charged with plotting to overthrow the government. One of the Dink family lawyers, Deniz Tuna, told Today’s Zaman last month, before the Interior Ministry’s investigation was concluded: “Security personnel were informed beforehand about the assassination plot and did not take steps to stop it. They are being protected by certain authorities in an attempted cover-up. We are talking about the state’s security forces: the gendarmerie, police and intelligence agencies.”
Benzer Haberler 
National
