The investigation into a murder of a Turkish journalist of the Armenian origin Hrant Dink will start from scratch as new prosecutor Muammer Akkas asked for new interrogation of key witnesses.

Muammer Akkas decided to deepen the investigation into a murder. Ten new witnesses, including gendarmes and policemen, have recently given testimony. The prosecutor’s office analyzed the testimony of key witnesses, including the killers Ogun Samast and Yasin Halal.

Hrant Dink, chief editor of the bilingual Armenian-Turkish Agos newspaper, was killed near his office in Istanbul on January 19, 2007 by Turkish ultranationalist Ogun Samast.

On last January the Turkish court found Yasin Hayal guilty of planning and organizing Hrant Dink’s murder, and sentenced him to life in prison. Erhan Tuncel, on the other hand, was found not guilty of prompting Dink’s murder, and, instead, he was sentenced to 10 years and 6 months for an explosion in a McDonald’s restaurant. But taking into account that Tuncel was already incarcerated for that amount of time, the court ruled his release.

The court also found the nineteen other defendants not guilty of being members of a terrorist organization.