ANOTHER PROSECUTION AGAINST AGOS JOURNALISTS

ANOTHER PROSECUTION AGAINST AGOS JOURNALISTS
Armenews
KarabakhOpen
25-01-2008 18:36:12

Reporters Without Borders condemns the charges that have been brought
against the owner of the Armenian-Turkish newspaper Agos, Serkis
Seropyan, and its new editor, Aris Nalci, because of a 9 November
editorial criticising the one-year suspended prison sentences passed
the previous month on Seropyan, former editor Arat Dink, and two
other journalists, Aydin Engin and Karin Karakashli.

According to a press report on 16 January, Seropyan and Nalci were
summoned by an Istanbul prosecutor and ordered to pay a fine of 23,500
euros because of the editorial. When they refused, the prosecutor
said they would be tried for "attempted obstruction of justice" under
article 288 of the criminal code, which carries a maximum penalty of
four a half years in prison.

Reporters Without Borders regards this prosecution as yet another
case of improper use of the press law.

The one-year suspended sentence was imposed on the four journalists
for reprinting an interview that Dink's father, then Agos editor
Hrant Dink, gave to Reuters in 2006 in which he said the massacres
of Armenians from 1915 to 1917 constituted genocide. Hrant Dink was
murdered in January 2007.