A Turkish court on Wednesday ordered to the arrest of two former civil servants in connection to the 2007 murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, Cumhuriyet newspaper reported.
Two former intelligence officers with the gendarmerie, Veysal Şahin and Volkan Şahin, were remanded in custody over their failure to report on an assassination plan against Dink, it said.
The Turkish-Armenian journalist was shot dead on Jan. 19, 2007 in front of the main office of the Turkish-Armenian weekly newspaper Agos in the Şişli district of Istanbul.
Dink, 52, frequently spoke out on the Armenian genocide and Armenian rights in Turkey, and he was prosecuted a number of times for “denigrating Turkey” and “insulting Turkish identity.”
A 17-year-old unemployed youth, Ogun Samast, confessed to the murder and was sentenced toalmost 23 years in jail in 2011.
An investigation into the killing revealed that security forces had been aware of a plot to kill Dink, but failed to act.
The Istanbul court found Veysal and Volkan Şahin, then-intelligence officers at the northern Trabzon province’s gendarmerie intelligence, of having prior information about the assassination, Cumhuriyet said.
Fourteen years on, 76 suspects remain on trial in connection to the murder, including government security officials.
The next hearing in the case is set to take place on Jan. 8, Cumhuriyet said.
Ahval