Yasin Hayal, who has confessed to inciting the murder of Hrant Dink shouted what sounded very much like a threat against Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk.

As he was being brought into an Istanbul court, earlier today, Hayal shouted: “Orhan Pamuk, be smart! Be smart!” Police quickly pressed his head down to silence him and led him away.

Hayal, a militant nationalist who served time in prison for a 2004 bomb attack, confessed to inciting last week’s slaying of the influential ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink and to providing a gun and money to the alleged killer, police said.

Hayal allegedly told the killer that Dink, who angered nationalists by calling the mass killing of Armenians in the early 20th century genocide, was “a traitor to his country who insults Turks.”

The suspected triggerman, a teenager named Ogun Samast, confessed to shooting Dink in a four-page statement given to prosecutors Wednesday, and was formally charged with the murder and membership in a criminal gang. He said Hayal gave him money and a picture of the journalist that he carried with him for several months, according to the Anatolia news agency.

Prosecutors on Wednesday also charged Hayal and three other people of inciting the slaying and of belonging to an armed criminal gang at the end of the legal four-day detention period, prosecutor Aykut Cengiz Engin said.

Like Dink, Pamuk has faced trial under Article 301 of the Turkish penal code for discussing the mass killing of Armenians during the final days of the Ottoman empire. And, like Dink, he received death threats at the time.

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