Ogun Samast, who is accused of fatally shooting Hrant Dink, could be released within 12 months as a result of the extremely slow pace at which his murder trial is proceeding. The Armenian-Turkish editor of the weekly Agos, was killed outside his office in Istanbul on 19 January 2007. Reporters Without Borders is appalled to learn that the accused murderer could be free. Arrested on 20 January 2007 in the city of Samsun, Samast has since been held in a detention centre. He and 19 other people, including accused masterminds Yasin Hayal and Erhan Tuncel, are being tried on charges of murdering Dink and membership of a terrorist group. However, it is widely suspected that the true masterminds are to be found within state apparatus but the slow-moving trial has shed no light on their identity. During the hearing on 25 October, the Istanbul court conducting the trial suddenly decided that Samast would have to be tried before a special court for minors on the grounds that he was only 17 at the time of the murder. However, according to Turkey’s criminal procedure code, a minor must be released after five years if he has not been convicted and his conviction has not been upheld by an appeal court. Under this law, Samast could therefore be released in January 2012. The transfer of Samast’s case to another court is just the latest of many setbacks in the trial of Dink’s accused murderers. The Dink family’s lawyer, Fethiye Cetin, issued a report on 6 January condemning the lack of progress. She said it was clear that the Trabzon police and gendarmerie, the Istanbul police and the police intelligence department had done everything possible to conceal evidence that could implicate them in the murder. She told Reporters Without Borders: “This murder was not the work of four or five youths who acted spontaneously out of nationalistic impulses. It was also not a matter of a few functionaries who infiltrated the state apparatus to eliminate Hrant Dink. The state is implicated at all levels, beginning with the army high command, the judicial system, the government, the police, the media and paramilitary forces. All the political actors had a role in his murder, either to cover it up or to prevent the identification of those who were truly responsible.” The European Court of Human Rights reached its 14 September decision ordering Turkey to pay Dink’s family 133,595 euros in compensation and legal costs for failing to protect Dink when it had information about the plots to kill him. The court also ruled that no effective and independent investigation had been carried out to determine the role of state agents in his murder.