Turkish Law Enforcement Deliberately Failed to Prevent Hrant Dink’s Murder

ISTANBUL — Former senior police official Levent Yarimel testified at the next court session on Hrant Dink murder case and noted that the murder investigation was severely flawed from the very beginning, according to Agos Armenian bilingual weekly of Istanbul.

He noted that the special investigation LOG data, which would have exposed everything, were not permitted to be used during the investigation.

“They told me that if we present the LOG data, police will be in a difficult situation, and [therefore] we would have to listen to what will be decided in Istanbul,” Yarimel said. “If the LOG data are concealed, there is intent here.

“Such a murder without the authorization from above could not have happened at a place, when the entire intelligence was there.”

Levent Yarimel added that he received threats for his actions toward solving this murder, ever since 2011.

Journalist Hrant Dink, the founder and chief editor of Agos, was gunned down on January 19, 2007, outside the then office of this newspaper.

In 2011, the perpetrator, Ogün Samast, was sentenced by a juvenile court to 22 years and ten months for the murder.

After long court proceedings and appeals, however, a new probe was ultimately launched in this murder case, and regarding numerous former and serving senior Turkish officials’ complicity in this assassination.