In connection with the fifth anniversary of the murder of Hrant Dink—the founder and former chief editor of Istanbul’s Agos Armenian weekly, who was killed on January 19, 2007—Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Chairman Kemal Kilicdaroglu telephoned Dink’s widow, Rakel Dink.

During the telephone conversation, Kilicdaroglu said: “Your pain is very deep. I know that the verdict of the judicial system, which is a subject of the ruling party, increased your pain twice as much,” CNN Turk news agency informs.          

Kemal Kilicdaroglu had harshly criticized the court’s ruling on Hrant Dink’s murder case, and stressed that, on the one hand, they are trying students, who demand free education, for being members of an organized criminal group, and, on the other hand, they note that Dink’s killers are not criminal group members, and that they functioned alone. “This is the justice of the[Turkey’s ruling] Justice and Development Party [AKP],” Kilicdaroglu had stated.   

To note, 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. The court also found the nineteen 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.