Key testimony from secret witness at 13th hearing in Hrant Dink murder trial

Important testimony was given at the 13th hearing in the trial of Turkish-Armenian newspaper editor Hrant Dink’s alleged killers in Istanbul on 10 May. A witness, whose identity was not revealed, identified three of the defendants as being at the scene of Dink’s fatal shooting outside his newspaper on 19 January 2007. Testifying that the main suspect and alleged shooter, Ogün Samast, was not alone, the secret witness said Yasin Hayal (one of the alleged masterminds) and his brother, Osman Hayal, were also there and that Osman Hayal also fired shots at Dink. The trial’s attention is now focused on these three men. The witness said he saw a man aged around 40-45 approach Dink and address him briefly, holding him by one hand. He then saw two other men approach and surround Dink. After giving a fairly detailed physical description of one of the men, the witness said he saw that he was holding a gun and appeared to be under the effects of drugs. “This person fired two shots at Dink, I remember it clearly,” he said. “I noticed that the other person was Ogün Samast. He also then fired two shots and shouted at the journalist, using the word ‘Armenian’.” Samast and Yasin Hayal dispute this testimony, saying it is not credible. Samast said he committed the murder on his own, insisting that: “Everyone knows that Yasin Hayal was somewhere else that day.” Two of the defendants were released after this testimony. Only three of the defendants are still in custody. They are Samast, Yasin Hayal and Erhan Tuncal, a police informer in Trabzon, Samast’s home town. Dink’s window, Rakel, was present at the 13th hearing as she has been at all of the previous ones, accompanied by her lawyers. Lawyers from the Paris bar association and a parliamentary representative of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) also attended the 10 May hearing. Reporters Without Borders welcomes the latest signs of progress in the trial but regrets that the court refused to hear testimony from foreign intelligence chief Sabri Uzun, who recently said he had not been told about the threats to Dink’s life as he had not been given the case files. He added that, if the proper procedure had been respected, Dink would still be alive. Uzun would not have been able to identify the killer, but his testimony would have drawn attention to the problems within the Turkish security services, which should have been able to protect Dink.