Threats to Hrant Dink Foundation sentenced

ISTANBUL - Demirören News Agency

Two suspects, Hüseyin Ateş and Ersin Başkan, who were on trial for sending death threats to the Hrant Dink Foundation, founded in the memory of the slain Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, have been  sentenced to imprisonment yesterday.

The Hrant Dink Foundation announced in 2020 on their Twitter account that they had received e-mails, threatening Rakel Dink, the wife of Hrant Dink and the lawyers of the foundation. 

An indictment filed into the incident included nine complainants, namely the foundation’s board members.
According to the prosecutor, Ateş sent two e-mails with death threats to the foundation and made a comment on Instagram on May 27-28, 2020.

Başkan had been accused of having written an e-mail to the foundation on May 30, the same year. Two years after, the court sentenced Ateş to two years and six months in prison on the charge of sending “anonymous threats.” 

The second suspect, Başkan,  got a two year jail term for the same crime.

“Ateş’s words of they ‘may turn up one night, when you least expect it’ are identified with Hrant Dink’s death” said a defense lawyer at the trial yesterday.

Hrant Dink was assassinated in front of his newspaper called Agos in 2007. He was shot dead by an ultranationalist hitman who is now serving a life sentence in prison.