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Turkish Court Formally Charges Suspect in Murder of Armenian Journalist


A court in Istanbul has formally charged a 17-year-old Turkish man with the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink and ordered the suspect held in prison.

Police arrested Ogun Samast Saturday in the Black Sea city of Samsun. He confessed to shooting and killing the high-profile newspaper editor outside his office Friday.

Police separately brought four other suspects to court.

They included Yasin Hayal, who served a prison term for the 2004 bomb attack against a McDonald's restaurant in the eastern Turkish city of Trabzon.

Hayal shouted what appeared to be a threat against Turkish Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk as he was led into the courthouse.

Hayal is suspected of inciting Samast to commit the murder.

Like Dink, Orhan Pamuk had faced trial in Turkey for commenting on the deaths up to one and a half million ethnic Armenians under the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Pamuk was acquitted but also faced threats from Turkish nationalists.

Dink angered nationalists by using the term "genocide" to describe the Armenian deaths.

Turkey has dismissed the claims of genocide, insisting that 300,000 Armenians died during the war.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP and AP.

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