Turkish prosecutor indicts 69 over Istanbul bombings

A Turkish prosecutor has indicted 69 suspects over four massive November car bombings which killed 63 people and left hundreds injured in Istanbul, the Anatolia news agency reported on Wednesday.
The report did not detail the charges, but the NTV news channel said the indictments sought life imprisonment for five of the defendants for "attempting to change the constitutional order by force".
The charge sheet called for prison terms ranging from four-and-a-half-years to 22.5 years for the remaining defendants for "belonging to an illegal organisation" and "aiding an abetting an illegal organisation", NTV added.
It was not immediately clear when the trial of the 69 defendants - 50 of whom are currently in custody - would begin.
Turkish authorities say Turkish extremists with links to the al Qaeda terrorist network of Osama bin Laden were behind the November 15 bombings of two synagogues and the November 20 attacks on the British consulate and the offices of the HSBC bank.
In both attacks, dubbed by the press as Turkey's "own September 11", suicide bombers drove trucks, laden with powerful bombs, to the buildings, triggering massive explosions with devastating results.
The 127-page indictment, drawn up by a team of five prosecutors from Istanbul's state security court, said a leader of the al Qaeda cell in Turkey had met up with a senior al Qaeda member and received his permission to carry out attacks in Turkey, NTV said.
It said that the members of the organisation did not see Turkey - a predominantly Muslim but strictly secular Nato member - as a Muslim country and considered it to be a "battleground", the report added.
The leaders of the Turkey cell were initially planning to attack an airbase in southern Turkey, which has been used by the United States and Britain to patrol the skies of northern Iraq, and an Israeli passenger ship in the holiday resort of Alanya on the Mediterranean coast, NTV said, quoting the indictment.
But the organisation apparently dropped its plans because of tight security at the base, it added.
The indictment added that some members of the Turkish organisation had met with bin Laden in person and several had received training in camps operated by the organisation in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Turkish authorities said in December they had dismantled the group behind the attacks and police were hunting for half a dozen other suspects who were thought to have fled abroad.