ISTANBUL, Oct 13: A Turkish court formally charged with treason on Wednesday a radical scholar extradited from Germany after months of legal wrangling.

Metin Kaplan, dubbed the "Caliph of Cologne", arrived in Istanbul on a small private jet late on Tuesday after losing his extradition appeal.

Turkey had sought Kaplan's extradition in connection with a 1998 plot to crash an explosives-laden aircraft into the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern Turkish state, in Ankara where political and military leadership were gathered for national day ceremonies.

A second allegation accused Kaplan of plotting another attack to seize a prominent mosque in Istanbul and then fight "to the death" with security forces. Kaplan faces charges of "trying to destroy the constitutional order by armed force" which could bring a life sentence if upheld.

The bearded, bespectacled Kaplan was remanded in custody awaiting his next hearing on Dec. 20. His lawyer denied that Kaplan and his group was involved in such a plot. Kaplan will be tried by one of the new special criminal courts established under European Union-inspired reforms. They replace the state security court system which had charged Kaplan in absentia.

The state security courts, scrapped at the EU's insistence, had been used to try political and security-related crimes. Turkish media hailed Germany's extradition of Kaplan as a vote of confidence in Ankara's political and judicial reforms.

"A great gesture from Germany to Turkey as it tries to enter the EU," said the conservative Aksam newspaper. Germany only agreed to Kaplan's extradition after being satisfied he would not face human rights abuses back home.

"I think the Turkish authorities will try to make Kaplan's trial as fair and transparent as possible. It is in Turkey's own interests to do so," said one Ankara-based EU diplomat.

Kaplan, who headed a Cologne-based group known as the Kalifatstaat (Caliphate state), has already served a four-year sentence in Germany for calling for the murder of a rival religious leader.

Berlin outlawed the Kalifatstaat group as unconstitutional and a threat to democracy in 2001. An appeal to overturn the ban was rejected in October 2003.

Germany introduced tighter controls over pro-Islam organisations after it became a focal point of investigations into the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States. Three of the four suspected suicide pilots, including alleged plot leader Mohamed Atta, had lived in the northern German city of Hamburg. -Reuters