ISTANBUL, Aug 6 (AFP) - The self-confessed bomber behind an attack on a masonic lodge in Istanbul said Friday he had no links to the al-Qaeda extremist network, the Anatolia news agency reported.
"This was an individual act. We have no links to any organization... I am not a member of any organization," Anatolia quoted Engin Vural, the self-confessed bomber, as saying.
Vural was speaking in an Istanbul court that began Friday trying him and 18 other suspects over the bombing.
The Turkish authorities have blamed a local Al-Qaeda cell for the March 9 attack, in which two assailants forced their way into a building of the Association of the Grand Temple of Free and Accepted Masons of Turkey, armed with guns and homemade pipe bombs.
One of the alleged bombers and a waiter were killed when the former reportedly set off explosives wrapped around his body. Vural, said to be the second assailant, survived with severe injuries. Five freemasons were also injured.
The prosecution is seeking life imprisonment for Vural and four others on charges of "attempting to change the constitutional order by force".
Among them is Adem Cetinkaya, who reportedly organized the assault on the lodge and was allegedly preparing to carry out a suicide bomb attack on a private television building in Istanbul when he was detained by police.
But Vural denied that Cetinkaya was among the planners of the attack and said he and the dead bombing suspect, Nihat Dogruel, had only benefitted from his knowledge of making explosives.
"We planned and carried out the attack with Dogruel," he said.
Vural also said that they attacked the freemasons, who are widely considered among Islamist circles in Turkey to be pro-Zionist, because "they had some interests and played dangerous games on Turkey".
He said he had spent several weeks in Pakistan in 2000 for religious education and had also gone to Chechnya the same year to carry out "humanitarian aid" activities but not to fight.
Cetinkaya did not testify in Friday's hearing and also refused to stand up when asked to do so by the judge, saying he did not recognize the court's authority, NTV news channel reported.
Cetinkaya has also been blamed for murdering a dentist in his Istanbul office in August last year because he was Jewish.
Prosecutors have requested prison terms of between 15 and 22 and a half years for two other defendants, who are charged with "membership of an illegal organization".
Five other suspects face prison terms of between four and a half years and seven and a half years for "aiding and abetting an illegal organization".
In addition to these 12 suspects, indicted on the original charge sheet, the court is trying seven other people suspected of involvement in the attacks, Anatolia reported.
The charges levelled against the seven new suspects were not immediately available.
Several of the suspects remain at large. On Friday, the judge freed on bail three of those who appeared in court. Ten others remain in jail.
The trial was adjourned until a later date, Anatolia said.
The attack on the lodge followed two twin car bombings against two synagogues, the British consulate and the HSBC bank in Istanbul last November, which claimed more than 60 lives.
The authorities have blamed the November bombings on a separate cell of Al-Qaeda linked to local Islamic extremists, which they said they had subsequently dismantled. Sixty-nine people have been charged over the carnage.