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Armenian editor killed for insulting Turks-report

21 Jan 2007 10:31:44 GMT
Source: Reuters

ISTANBUL, Jan 21 (Reuters) - The suspected killer of a prominent Turkish-Armenian journalist has confessed to shooting Hrant Dink because he had insulted Turkish people, broadcaster CNN Turk reported on Sunday.

"I read on the Internet that he said 'I am from Turkey but Turkish blood is dirty' and I decided to kill him ... I do not regret this," Ogun Samast told interrogators shortly after he was arrested in Samsun on the Black Sea coast, CNN Turk said.

Samast, 17, was arrested on Saturday and confessed to the murder in an initial interrogation in Samsun before he and several other suspects were transferred to Istanbul, the state news agency Anatolian said.

Police declined to comment, but said interrogations in Istanbul were continuing.

Dink, editor of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos, was shot dead in the street as he left his office on Friday in a killing which has shocked Turkey.

Last year Turkey's top court upheld a six-month suspended jail sentence against Dink for referring in an article to an Armenian nationalist idea of ethnic purity without Turkish blood.

Dink, 52, was a Christian of Armenian descent. He was frequently criticised by Turkish nationalists, including top politicians and prosecutors, for saying the mass killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during World War One was genocide.

Nationalists see such comments as a threat to national unity. The government of Turkey, which is predominantly Muslim, denies genocide was committed and says both Christian Armenians and Muslim Turks died in large numbers as the Ottoman Empire was breaking up.

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Last updated:Sun Jan 21 10:32:16 2007