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Alert

Journalist receives death threat from stranger

(BIANET/IFEX) - Journalist Ramazan Pekgöz, news chief of the Turkish "Günlük" newspaper, received a death threat while he was walking to his office on the morning of 28 February 2010.

A person with the initials A.S. had followed Pekgöz on the sidewalk before he stopped him and said, "We finished Hrant Dink off. We will do the same to you". Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink was assassinated in front of his workplace, "Agos" newspaper, in January 2007. Pekgöz filed a complaint about the person who threatened him at the Taksim Police Station in central Istanbul. The suspect was subsequently arrested.

Pekgöz said that this person had followed him starting from Galatasaray High School, close to the southern end of the popular Istiklal Avenue in Taksim (Istanbul).

Apparently, the suspect was cursing on the way. Pekgöz said that he asked the suspect why he was following him once he got close to him and he replied, "This is a street, I am just walking".

The person known as A.S. followed the journalist for another while and then approached him directly by threatening Pekgöz: "We finished Hrant Dink off. We will do the same to you". Pekgöz instantly went to the nearby Taksim Police Station and filed a complaint.

Police officers of the Anti-Terror Branch, the Security Branch and the Intelligence Branch started an investigation into the matter upon receiving Pekgöz's complaint. It turned out that suspect A.S. has a criminal record for theft. He was apparently born in Çanakkale (south of the Dardanelles) in 1977.