Suspects accused of helping to orchestrate the brutal murders of three Christians, in southeast Turkey in 2007, blamed the crime on the Hizmet movement, an influential Islamic group accused of treason by the ruling Turkish government, at the 97th round of hearings on 15 October.
Testimony from two former military officers and an Islamic university researcher dominated the hearings in a trial that has gone on for seven years The accused perpetrators were brought from prison to read out their lengthy defence claims to the Malatya First High Criminal Court.
The three men claimed that the Hizmet movement led by Muslim scholar Fetullah Gülen was behind the torture and stabbing to death of two Turkish converts to Christianity and a German missionary at the Zirve Publishing House in Malatya in April 2007.
