Turkish court sentenced two former police chiefs on Friday to life in prison for their role in the killing of prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink more than 14 years ago, Reuters reported.
Editor of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos and then Turkey’s best known Armenian voice abroad, Dink was shot dead as he left his Istanbul office in January 2007. After the murder, tens of thousands gathered in central Istanbul to mourn.
In 2011, Dink’s assassin Ogun Samast was sentenced to nearly 23 years in prison by a juvenile court. He was 17 when the killing took place. The following January a man named Yasin Hayal was sentenced to life in jail for instigating the killing.
Among those convicted by the court on Friday, former police intelligence chief Ali Fuat Yilmazer received a jail sentence without parole for murder, according to Anadolu news agency . Another police chief, Ramazan Akyurek, was also handed a life sentence.
State media said the court ruled that the murder was carried out in line with the goals of a clandestine network linked to U.S.-based Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim preacher whom Ankara accuses of orchestrating an attempted coup in July 2016.
Gulen, who has lived in the United States since 1999 and denies any involvement in the failed putsch, was one of 13 fugitives from justice among 76 defendants on trial in the Dink case. The court did not rule on the case of Gulen and the other 12 fugitives and instead separated their cases.
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