A TURKISH court sentenced two former police chiefs to life imprisonment today for their roles in covering up the murder of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. 

But Mr Dink’s family and lawyers insisted that the drawn-out trial had failed to shed adequate light on the killing and said they would appeal.

The editor of the bilingual Agos newspaper was shot dead in broad daylight outside his office in Istanbul in January 2007. 

He was a strong supporter of a relationship between Armenia and Turkey and had received death threats because of his comments on the genocide of Armenians by Ottoman Turks during the first world war. 

Turkish prosecutors have previously linked his assassination to the religious network led by Fethullah Gulen. The US-based cleric was a friend of the state at the time of Mr Dink’s death. 

In today’s ruling, Istanbul’s former police intelligence chief Ramazan Akyurek, his deputy Ali Fuat Yilmazer and four other former security officers were given life sentences. 

An additional 23 people were convicted on charges including accessory to murder, membership of a terrorist group and falsification of documents. 

Thirty-three others were acquitted, while the cases against Mr Gulen and other defendants who were being tried in absentia were deferred. 

Mr Dink’s killer, then 17-year-old Ogun Samast, was previously sentenced to 23 years’ imprisonment. Another person was sentenced to life imprisonment for instigating the murder before the case was reopened following allegations of a cover-up of death threats against Mr Dink.

Lawyers for Mr Dink’s family branded the ruling insufficient and inaccurate.

“The decision does not concretely expose who gave the order to kill,” they said.

“This decision consists of serious mistakes and does not bring to light Dink’s murder with all of its aspects.

“We will take it to the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court. We will force this process until the end to ensure a proper trial.”