At the 15th hearing of the trial of the case into the assassination of Istanbul Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, the Istanbul court on grave crimes on Friday ruled in favor of the prosecutor’s motion to have five defendants released.

Five Istanbul Gendarmerie servicemen were released at the end of the hearing of the trial into the murder case, reported Mynet website of Turkey. 

The court, however, merely commuted their preventive measure, and ordered them not to leave their places of residence until the end of this trial.

The next court hearings are scheduled from January 29 to February 2, 2018.

Charges have been filed against 85 people in the Dink murder case; eleven of them are detained, whereas another ten persons are being searched for.

Hrant Dink, the founder and chief editor of Agos Armenian weekly of Istanbul, was gunned down on January 19, 2007, outside the then office of this newspaper.

In 2011, the perpetrator, Ogün Samast, was sentenced by a juvenile court to 22 years and ten months for the murder.

After long court proceedings and appeals, however, a new probe was ultimately launched in this murder case, and regarding numerous former and serving senior Turkish officials’ complicity in this assassination.