Turkish Retrial Begins Over Killing Of Armenian Journalist

Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in his office in Istanbul in 2006

A Turkish court has begun a retrial of eight suspects in the killing of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

On September 17, around 200 demonstrators gathered outside the Istanbul court where the suspects were being retried.

The case was reopened after an appeals court deemed the defendants were part of a criminal conspiracy in May.

An Istanbul court sentenced Dink's self-confessed killer, Ogun Samast, to 23 years in jail in 2011.

The next year the court convicted the alleged mastermind of the murder, Yasin Hayal, to life imprisonment for inciting the killing. The court, however, acquitted other defendants.

Dink was killed outside the offices of his weekly newspaper, "Agos," in 2007.

He was a critic of the government and had angered Turkish nationalists for calling the World War I massacre of Armenians a genocide.

Based on reporting by AFP, Reuters, and dpa