ISTANBUL - Turkish Muslim extremist Metin Kaplan, alias "The Caliph of Cologne", told a tribunal here Monday how he tried to convert the late Pope John Paul II to Islam.
"When I was in Germany, before the pope's death, I wrote him a letter, asking him to convert to Islam," Kaplan, a 51-year-old father of three, told the court.
Kaplan said it was his "responsibility" as a Muslim to try to bring the pope into the Islamic fold.
The prosecutor Monday sought life imprisonment for Kaplan, accusing him of trying to forcefully overthrow Turkey's secular political system.
Among the charges against Kaplan, leader of the Cologne-based extremist group known as "Hilafet Devleti" -- the Caliphate State, in Turkish -- is an alleged 1988 bid to use an explosives-laden plane to blow up the mausoleum in Ankara of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the secular Turkish republic.
Lawyers for Kaplan, on the second day of his trial that opened here in December, denied there was a bid to bomb the mausoleum, purportedly during festivities in 1988 to mark the 75th anniversary of the republic.
"Metin Kaplan never was a terrorist," attorney Ismet Koc told the court. "He published books and expressed his thoughts, but never used force against anybody.
"Three people arrested in connection with the mausoleum case said they received their orders from Mr Kaplan, but their testimony was obtained under torture," he said.
Koc called on the court to act in accordance with judicial practice in the European Union, which Turkey is seeking to join, and free his client on parole.
The court threw out the request and adjourned the trial to May 30.
Kaplan, who moved to Germany in 1983, took over the leadership of Hilafet Devleti after the death in 1995 of his father, Cemaleddin, a preacher known in Turkey as "The Voice of Darkness" for his ultra-radical Islamist views.
Metin Kaplan was jailed in Germany for four years from 1999 to 2003 for having ordered the killing of a rival during the struggle for succession as the group's leader.
He was expelled to Turkey in October after a long legal battle and has been detained since at a prison in Tekirdag, northwestern Turkey.
04/04/2005 12:59 GMT