An Istanbul court yesterday sentenced two former police officers and two ex-security officials to life imprisonment for the 2007 murder of journalist Hrant Dink.

Deutsche Welle reports that the court sentenced the city's former police intelligence chief Ramazan Akyurek and his former deputy Ali Fuat Yilmazer to life in prison for "premeditated murder", citing the Turkish state news agency Anadolu. 

They were also given an additional 7.5 years for forgery and destroying official documents. Former top Interior Ministry officers Yavuz Karakaya and Muharrem Demirkale were also given life sentences.

Ali Oz, a former Interior Ministry commander, was sentenced to 28 years in prison. He commanded the Trabzon region where Ogün Samast, the gunman who shot Dink, came from.

The court dropped charges against several other people involved, as the statute of limitation had expired.

Dink was assassinated in Sisli, Istanbul, on January 19, 2007 as he returned to the offices of Agos, the newspaper he ran.

Following the court’s verdict, Dink’s family released a statement describing the verdict as a partial victory for the truth and that the court case has concealed the involvement of the Turkish “deep state” in Hrant Dink’s murder.

“We, as his family, together with his friends and lawyers, with the strength of our friends whom we carried his coffin together with, will never give up our efforts to understand and tell and our legal struggle. Until the whole mechanism is exposed and made unusable,” the statement reads.

Photo: ANKA News Agency