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ANKARA: Committee to hear Cerrah again on Dink murder

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  • ANKARA: Committee to hear Cerrah again on Dink murder

    Committee to hear Cerrah again on Dink murder

    Today's Zaman, Turkey
    March 1 2008

    A parliamentary committee investigating the murder of Agos weekly
    Editor-in-Chief Hrant Dink announced on Thursday that it would call
    Ýstanbul Police Chief Celalettin Cerrah to the stand once more.

    The decision came after two senior police officers from Trabzon
    accused Cerrah of having ignored a tip-off about the murder plot.

    An ultra-nationalist teenager shot Dink dead in broad daylight
    outside his newspaper's Ýstanbul office on Jan. 19, 2007. The ensuing
    investigation revealed that the police had been informed of plans to
    murder the journalist. Nineteen suspects, 17 of them currently under
    arrest, are facing trial on charges of having established a crime gang
    to plan the assassination of the ethnic-Armenian editor. A majority
    of the suspects, including the hit man, are from Trabzon, where the
    local police say they had informed the Ýstanbul police about the plot
    to kill Dink on more than one occasion.

    Prosecuting lawyers say the police, in addition to having ignored the
    warnings, destroyed crucial evidence to protect some of the suspects,
    among them a one-time police informant.

    A parliamentary subcommittee to Parliament's Human Rights Commission
    was set up to investigate the Dink murder last year. This past
    Wednesday the subcommittee heard testimony from Trabzon Police
    Intelligence Department Chief Ramazan Akyurek and the former chief
    of the same unit, Engin Dinc, who both said they believed Cerrah had
    not done enough to prevent the murder.

    Akyurek reiterated to the subcommittee that Trabzon police had warned
    the Ýstanbul police about the assassination plans. "I am not blaming
    anyone for anything. Everybody has to do their job. But if it was
    me, I would have ensured that Dink was safe," he said. Ýstanbul
    Police Chief Cerrah, who also testified earlier, had said that his
    department dismissed the information from Trabzon because it had a
    "low" emergency coding.

    Also on Wednesday, Dinc told the committee that: "There is no such
    thing as 'low' or 'high' coding. The information given was important.

    We did our job and sent the intelligence information." Dinc also
    claimed he had called the chief of the Ýstanbul Police Department's
    intelligence unit and "informed them." Dinc said this was reason
    enough for them to take measures to protect the slain journalist.

    He also told the subcommittee that he had kept Erhan Tuncel under
    control. Tuncel, a former police informant from Trabzon, is also a key
    suspect in the crime, as is Yasin Hayal, a neo-nationalist suspected
    of having groomed the 17-year-old hit man.

    The police said Tuncel helped them monitor the activity of
    ultra-nationalist groups in Trabzon. Hayal was convicted in the
    bombing of a McDonald's restaurant in Trabzon in 2004 that injured
    six people. He was released after serving a 10-month prison sentence.

    "Yasin Hayal has serious psychological problems. I put a lot effort
    into getting him after that McDonald's bomb. We captured him in a joint
    operation with the Ýstanbul police. I was there at his interrogation;
    I saw that he was the type to stage attacks," said Dinc.

    A department director for Trabzon police intelligence, Faruk Sarý,
    told the subcommittee that Tuncel was fired for not being available
    at all times and "slacking off the job."

    Hearing testimonies of the two officers, the subcommittee decided to
    call Cerrah to testify again in the next few weeks.

    01.03.2008

    Today's Zaman with wires Ýstanbul

    --Boundary_(ID_sM7qyMm0J8CIt4XhDQBs dw)--
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