ISTANBUL. – A Turkish court of appeals reversed one of the points in the court ruling that was made in the case into the murder of Hrant Dink.

To note, Dink was the founder and chief editor of Istanbul’s Agos Armenian bilingual weekly, who was gunned down in 2007 in front of his office building.    

In the appeals court’s verdict, the charges of being “members of a gang that is formed to commit armed crime” is attributed to those that are convicted of Dink’s murder, Agos reports. The earlier court decision did not include being armed gang members, and this had mitigated the sentences of the guilty. 

Also, the said court of appeals upheld the earlier court verdict on sentencing Yasin Hayal—a directive giver in Dink’s murder—to life in prison.         

As Armenian News-NEWS.am informed earlier, on January 17, 2012 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 ten years and six 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.