TWO TURKISH SOLDIERS CHARGED OVER ARMENIAN JOURNALIST'S MURDER

Two Turkish soldiers have been charged for abuse of power as part of
the probe into the murder of ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink,
officials and media reports said Friday.

The pair are the first members of the security forces in the northern
city of Trabzon, where the murder was planned, to face charges in
the case.

The security forces in the Black Sea port have been accused of failing
to act to prevent the murder despite having received intelligence
that local ultra-nationalist youths were plotting to kill Dink.

A prominent member of Turkey's tiny Armenian community, Dink, 52,
was gunned down outside the office of his bilingual Turkish-Armenian
weekly Agos in Istanbul on January 19.

Even though he campaigned for Turkish-Armenian reconciliation, Turkish
nationalists hated him for branding the Ottoman massacres of Armenians
during World War I as genocide, a label that Ankara fiercely rejects.

Trabzon prosecutor Yakup Unal Demir told AFP he had indicted two
members of the gendarme, a paramilitary force policing rural areas,
but declined to give further details.

The two soldiers risk between six months and two years in jail for
abusing power, newspapers reported.

The charges resulted from a probe that followed the testimony of
a relative of the alleged mastermind of the plot, who said he had
informed the gendarme that his nephew was seeking to buy a gun to
kill Dink, the Sabah daily said.

It was not immediately clear when the trial will start.

The self-confessed gunman, 17-year-old Ogun Samast, alleged mastermind
Yasin Hayal and 17 other suspects went on trial in Istanbul in July.

Lawyers for the Dink family have accused the police of withholding
and destroying evidence in the case, suggesting that some members of
the security forces might have condoned the murder.

In September, two policemen went on trial in the northern city of
Samsun for their role in a scandal that saw security forces pose for
"souvenir" pictures with the gunman after he was captured there a
day after the murder.

The killing prompted fresh calls on Ankara to purge the "deep state"
-- a term used to describe security forces prepared to act outside the
law to preserve what they consider to be the best national interests.

The charge sheet in the main trial in Istanbul says police received
intelligence as early as 2006 of a plot to kill Dink organised in
Trabzon, home of Samast and most of his alleged accomplices.