ISTANBUL. – Yasin Hayal, who was sentenced to life in prison during the murder case of Hrant Dink—the founder and former chief editor of Istanbul’s Agos Armenian bilingual weekly, who was gunned down in 2007 in front of his office building—, petitioned to Turkish Court of Appeals with a request to overturn the court ruling made against him.   

In his letter of petition, Hayal claimed that it was Erhan Tuncel’s idea to kill Dink. He noted that Tuncel had convinced him that Hrant Dink was an enemy of the Turks, Radikal daily of Turkey informs. 

On January 17, 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.

And earlier, Hrant Dink’s actual killer, Ogun Samast, was sentenced to a total of 22 years and 10 months for Dink’s murder and for bearing illegal arms. But Samast was tried at a juvenile court, since he was a minor at the time of the murder.