Turkish Minister of Justice, Sadullah Ergin, did not comment on the court verdict that was reached Tuesday in the murder trial of Hrant Dink, the founder and former chief editor of Istanbul’s Agos Armenian weekly, who was killed in 2007. Ergin noted that the judicial process has not ended.     

“The [judicial] process has not ended. The appeals process is continuing. When the process ends, we will make a respective conclusion,” the Minister said, NTV News Agency of Turkey informed.         

To note, Turkey’s Culture and Tourism Minister Ertugrul Gunay had said that such ruling by the court is a perilous development.

As Armenian News-NEWS.am informed earlier, on Tuesday, 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 store. But taking into account that Tuncel was already incarcerated for that amount of time, the court ruled his release.  

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.