One hundred thousand people marched through the Armenian capital on Wednesday to pay their last respects to slain Turkish-Armenian editor, Hrant Dink, in Yerevan on Wednesday, in the biggest gathering of its kind for seven years. - Reuters
ISTANBUL/ANKARA (Reuters):
Five people have been charged with involvement in the killing of Turkish-Armenian editor, Hrant Dink, Turkish media reported yesterday.
Police blew up a suspicious package outside parliament which carried a note from the ultra-nationalist Turkish Revenge Brigade (TIT) calling for two key suspects, including the suspected assassin, to be released.
Istanbul's chief prosecutor Aykut Cengiz Engin has charged Ogun Samast, an unemployed 17-year-old from the Black Sea coast, with premeditated murder and member-ship of an armed group.
Four others have been charged with forming an armed organ-isation and incitement to murder.
Samast, who is reported to have been close to an ultranationalist group in his home town Trabzon, has admitted to shooting Dink as he left his newspaper Agos in Istanbul last Friday.
Nationalism
The murder brought 100,000 mourners onto Istanbul's streets for Dink's funeral on Tuesday and reignited debate about hardline nationalism in a country seeking European Union membership.
"From the quality and the nature of the crimes attributed to the suspects it is clear the result emerges that they formed an armed group," Engin told reporters late on Wednesday in comments reported by the NTV website.
Engin said the suspects had been remanded in custody and pro-secutors would now prepare an indictment against them.
TIT, a shadowy group which has claimed responsibility for a series of deadly attacks, threatened in a note on the device placed outside parliament that real explosions would follow unless Samast and Yasin Hayal were released.
Hayal, a known nationalist militant, has admitted to inciting his friend Samast to kill Dink, the police said. Hayal served 11 months in jail for the 2004 bombing of a McDonald's restaurant in Trabzon.
