A Turkish court has sentenced six military officers to up to six months in prison in connection with the 2007 murder of prominent Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

The court in the northern city of Trabzon on Thursday convicted the officers of negligence in preventing Dink's murder, by ignoring intelligence about a plot to kill the outspoken journalist.

The court sentenced the two top-ranking officers to six months in jail, while the four others received jail terms of four months. The officers are expected to appeal the verdict. Two others were acquitted of the charges.

Dink was editor of the bilingual newspaper Agos and a prominent member of the ethnic Armenian minority in Turkey. He was shot to death in January 2007 outside of his office in central Istanbul. The self-confessed gunman , an alleged hardline nationalist teenager from Trabzon, is currently on trial for the murder.

Dink had angered Turkish nationalists by using the term “genocide” to describe the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in the early 20th century. Turkey strongly rejects use of the term to refer to the killings.

Lawyers for Dink's family have accused authorities of taking insufficient measures to protect the journalist, who had received death threats prior to his assassination.

In September, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Turkish authorities failed to protect Dink and ordered the government to pay compensation to his family.