French President Emanuel Macron personally handed the Jacques Chirac Prize for Conflict Prevention to Rakel Dink, the widow of slain Istanbul Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

Macron stressed that the Hrant Dink Foundation, led by Rakel Dink, has done a tremendous job in exposing hatred in Turkish media, contributing to the normalization of Armenian-Turkish relations, and protecting the rights of national minorities, reported Diken news website of Turkey.

Rakel Dink, for her part, noted that the aforementioned foundation was founded after Hrant Dink’s assassination, when they had decided with friends to continue his fight.

Hrant Dink, the founder and chief editor of Agos Armenian weekly of Istanbul, was gunned down on January 19, 2007, outside the then office of this newspaper.

In 2011, the perpetrator, Ogün Samast, was sentenced by a juvenile court to 22 years and ten months for the murder.

After long court proceedings and appeals, however, a new probe was ultimately launched in this murder case, and regarding numerous former and serving senior Turkish officials’ complicity in this assassination.