Turkish police arrest teenager in killing of journalist

A 17-year-old suspect was being held Sunday under heavy security in the shooting death of Hrant Dink, a Turkish journalist of Armenian descent, a killing that has intensified the debate in Turkey on the sensitive topics of national identity and freedom of expression during an important election year. The suspect, Ogun Samast, was captured Saturday night after his father recognised him from a surveillance camera photo shown by the media and alerted the authorities. According to the state-run Anatolia news agency, the chief prosecutor, said Sunday that Samast had been caught in possession of the gun used to kill Dink and had confessed to the brazen daylight attack. Dink, 52, the editor of the weekly bilingual newspaper Agos, was shot three times in the neck and head as he left work on a busy commercial avenue Friday. In his confession, according to the Dogan News Agency, Samast told the police that he had been reading Dink’s columns via the internet from Trabzon and did not like what he was reading and so ‘decided to kill him.’ (International Herald Tribune,January 22, 2007)

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