Protests mark Turkish-Armenian editor's murder trial

Hundreds of demonstrators fearing a state coverup of the murder of a Turkish-Armenian editor demonstrated outside an Istanbul courthouse on Monday proclaiming: "We are all witnesses. We demand justice."

Dink had angered Turkish nationalists with his comments on the massacres of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey during World War One. More than 100,000 people turned out at his funeral to show solidarity and protest against violent nationalism. Lawyers were expected to question the suspects for the first time at Monday's hearing. Eight suspects are in custody.

Media reports have said one of the suspects had repeatedly tipped off police about a plot to kill Dink and that these tip-offs had been conveyed to the Istanbul police headquarters.

Several officials, including the head of police intelligence in Istanbul, have been sacked or reassigned to other jobs over their handling of the Dink case.

Ankara denies Armenian claims, backed by many historians and by a growing number of foreign parliaments, that the killings amounted to a systematic genocide. It says large numbers of both Muslim Turks and Christian Armenians died in ethnic fighting as the Ottoman Empire collapsed during World War One.