YEREVAN. – Ogun Samast, the murderer 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—, gave an interview from prison to Taraf daily of Turkey.

Samast stated that, aside from him and Yasin Hayal, there also is a third person in connection with Dink’s murder, and he would give that person’s identity if the appeals court overturns the verdict against him. 

In Samast’s words, those people or media, who had called Dink a “traitor to the motherland” and made him a target for the Turkish nationalists, are as guilty as him in Dink’s murder. “The court must launch an investigation against them. I knew neither Hrant Dink nor Agos. I made a mistake for which I am paying with my youth years,” he said.   

“When I saw Dink, I avoided to kill him. But I remembered the words written against him, and I took that step. I was not too keen on killing Dink. Simply, I received numerous threats. I was to surrender myself after the murder. Yasin Hayal was assuring me I would come out of prison in 6-7 months. It was Yasin Hayal who gave me Dink’s photographs and the gun, with which I carried out the murder. It was very good that I was arrested, since they would have killed me if I had not been arrested,” Ogun Samast noted.        

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 defendants not guilty of being members of a terrorist organization. In its turn, the Istanbul Prosecutor’s Office announced that upon receiving the grounds for the court verdict, it will appeal the ruling. 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.