An Istanbul court sentenced on Monday the assassin of Armenian journalist Hrant Dink to nearly 23 years in prison. Editor of bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly Agos and Turkey's best known Armenian voice abroad, Dink was shot in broad daylight as he left his Istanbul office in January 2007. His killer Ogun Samast was 17 and unemployed when the killing took place. He was sentenced by a juvenile court to 22 years and 10 months.
Dink had angered nationalists with articles referring to a Turkish "genocide" of Christian Armenians in 1915. Another court is hearing the cases against two other main suspects in the conspiracy and a handful of others accused of being linked to the plot.
Reacting to Samast's sentencing, Eyten Mahcupyan, a Turkish Armenian columnist who took over editorship of Agos after Dink's death, praised the court for opting for a severe jail term. Two years before he was killed, Dink received a suspended six-month jail term for "insulting Turkey's identity" in an article.