A Turkish court has sentenced a man to life in prison for masterminding the killing of an ethnic Armenian journalist five years ago.

In Tuesday's ruling, the Istanbul court gave Yasin Hayal a life term for instigating the shooting of Hrant Dink outside his office in January 2007.

The court also acquitted 19 defendants of charges of being part of a terrorist group — a ruling denounced by lawyers for Dink's family, who say the journalist's murder was a planned act.

A juvenile court last July sentenced ultranationalist Ogun Samast to almost 23 years in prison for the assassination of Dink. Authorities prosecuted Samast as a minor because he was 17 years old at the time of the attack.

Dink was the chief editor of the bilingual Turkish-Armenian weekly newspaper Agos when he was assassinated. He had angered Turkish nationalists by describing the mass killings of Armenians by Ottoman Turks in the early 20th century as a “genocide.”

Turkey rejects the term and says the collapse of the Ottoman Empire triggered unrest that killed large numbers of Turks as well as Armenians.

Turkish authorities have prosecuted dozens of people in connection with Dink's assassination, including security personnel accused of ignoring intelligence of ultranationalist plots to kill the journalist.

In 2010, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Turkish authorities failed to protect Dink and ordered the government to pay compensation to his family.

The European Union has closely followed the Dink case as it underlines concerns about EU candidate Turkey's human rights record.