Three arrested over armed attack on Dündar

The arrests resulted from an investigation into the phone records of Murat Şahin, who carried out the attack. 
The police investigation into the attack has also included an examination of Şahin’s bank account activity, the source said, speaking on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on speaking to media. 

Şahin approached Dündar as he was speaking to reporters during a break in the May 6 hearing, in which he was being tried on charges of revealing state secrets. Şahin fired two shots at Dündar’s legs, saying, “You are a traitor.” 

He was later detained while Dündar was uninjured, though Yağız Şenkal, a reporter for private broadcaster NTV, was wounded in the leg.

Şahin claimed he carried out the act “independently” and “wanted to teach Dündar a lesson” as he “did not like him,” security sources said, after detaining the 40-year-old following the failed attempt.

“If I wanted to kill him, I would [have] but I shot at his leg to scare him,” Şahin reportedly said. 

Dündar has been provided with a special three-person security team from the Istanbul Police Department, in addition to his previous guards, one of whom intervened in the incident. 

Following the attack, Dündar, the editor-in-chief of daily Cumhuriyet, and Erdem Gül, the paper’s Ankara bureau chief, were convicted by an Istanbul court and sentenced to five years and 10 months and five years in prison, respectively.        

The journalists were on trial for “leaking state secrets” due to stories published about Turkish intelligence trucks bound for Syria with hidden weapons in early 2014. They were arrested on Nov. 26, 2015 and released on Feb. 26 following a Constitutional Court ruling.

The 14th High Criminal Court acquitted Dündar and Gül of charges of attempting to overthrow the government, while ordering that the charges of “knowingly and willfully” assisting a terrorist organization be separated from the trial.