Three former high-ranking Turkish police officers received life sentence for the January 2007 assassination of Agos newspaper editor-in-chief Hrant Dink, Anadolu Agency reports.
According to the indictment, Fethullah Gulen’s organization was involved in Dink’s assassination. Gulen is an opposition Islamic preacher, his organization in Turkey is known as FETO, and considered a terrorist organization. Gulen, who lives in the United States, was also charged in absentia.
An Istanbul court has convicted former leaders of the Turkish Trabzon Security Service, the Istanbul Police Intelligence Department and the Istanbul Gendarmerie Intelligence Department of plotting to assassinate Dink. The former head of the Trabzon state gendarmerie was sentenced to 28 years in prison, and journalist Ercan Gün, was sentenced to ten years in prison for membership in FETO.
Hrant Dink was assassinated on January 19, 2007, by 17-year-old nationalist Ogün Samast at the entrance to his newspaper’s Istanbul office. The police arrested Samast the next day, and in 2011 the court sentenced him to 22 years and 10 months in prison. He was a minor at the time. Two more ultra-nationalists have been arrested for helping a young man kill Dink.
Dink’s murder sparked public outrage in Turkey, with days of protests and solidarity rallies with the Armenian community. The journalist was known for his outspoken editorials that tried to end the outright hostile rhetoric he believed had “poisoned” relations between Turkey and Armenia and the Armenian community in Turkey. He was at the forefront of reconciliation efforts between the two communities at odds over the genocide of Armenians during World War I by Ottoman forces.