European Forum

23 years prison for murderer Armenian journalist Hrant Dink

On 25 July an Istanbul court sentenced the chief suspect in the 2007 assassination of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink to nearly 23 years in prison. A panel of judges found the suspect, Ogun Samast, guilty of killing Dink outside his office in January 2007. The court condemned Samast to life in prison, but reduced the sentence to 21-and-a-half years since he was still a minor at the time of the 2007 murder. Samast also received an additional 16-month jail term for possession of an unlicensed weapon. Samast was 17 and unemployed when he shot the journalist.

Dink, the editor of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly "Agos" and Turkey's best known Armenian voice abroad, had angered nationalists referring to the mass killings of Armenians in the early 20th century as genocide. Turkey denies the killings constitute genocide. He was shot in broad daylight as he left his office in Istanbul’s Şişli district.

Sources: RFE/RL, HurriyetDailey, Photo: Flickr Kemal Y.