A top Turkish general, now under arrest in the Ergenokon coup plot, has been summoned to testify in the 2007 murder of three Christian missionaries in Malatya, according to a Hurriyet news report.

Five young men, who confessed to the crime, were later arrested. But according Erdal Doğan, a lawyer in the case, the testimony of General Hurşit Tolon might shed light on the case ad point to a “deep state” action rather than a mere group of religious fanatics.

Doğan, who is also a family attorney for the family of murdered Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, said this step would contribute to moving forward in other cases as well.

The Malatya massacre was not the first of its kind. In 2006, Father Andrea Santoro of the Catholic Church of Santa Maria in Trabzon was murdered. One year later, editor-in-chief of Armenian-Turkish newspaper Agos, Hrant Dink, was murdered in Istanbul on Jan 19.

Doğan noted that the murder of Hrant Dink, of the important links in the massacre chains, may assume a new dimension once Tolon is tried as a suspect.