Turkey: 5 held over Turkish-Armenian journalist murder

ISTANBUL

Police detained five people, including military personnel Wednesday in connection with an ongoing probe over the 2007 assassination of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, according to a police source.

The anti-terrorism police in Istanbul detained three gendarmes and an owner of a publishing house, while another gendarme was held in simultaneous operations conducted in the Black Sea province of Trabzon, the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on speaking to media, said.

Dink, who was considered as one of the most prominent Armenian voices in the country and was the founder of Turkey’s only Armenian-language weekly newspaper, Agos, was assassinated in broad daylight in front of his office in Istanbul on Jan. 19, 2007.

Dink's assassin, Ogun Samast, 17 years old at the time of the murder, is serving a 23-year prison sentence. Samast, who was tried and convicted in 2011, said he killed Dink for insulting "Turkishness".

Turkey's Constitutional Court ruled in July 2014 the murder case had been an "ineffective investigation".

Last year, another case was launched regarding the alleged negligence by certain officers in Dink’s murder case. Certain former senior police officers were questioned and others arrested in an ongoing court case.

For instance, an Istanbul court also ordered the arrest of a Turkish police chief, Ercan Demir, who was charged with causing the death of Hrant Dink by "deliberate negligence".

Demir was a police chief in Trabzon when Dink was murdered in Istanbul. The murderer, Ogun Samast, reportedly came from Trabzon.