The court in southeast Turkey said Sergeant Tanju Cavus would remain free until the end of the trial.

Cavus pleaded legimate defence for shooting into the air after an angry mob attacked his car on November 9.

"They blocked our car and attacked us with iron bars and stones shouting:'it's a policeman, kill him'," Cavus said in a statement.

He had been returning from a medical visit to a nearby town with his wife and children, he said.

"I panicked. I got my weapon out and I shot in the air without a specific target," he said. "If I hadn't used my weapon, I, my wife and children wouldn't be alive now."

Several thousand people had gathered after a bomb attack on a bookshop, killing one and injuring six, in the town of Semdinli, near the border with Iran and Iraq.

The crowd, which believed the attack was organised by members of the security forces, tried to lynch three men who ran away from the site of the blast, before clashing with police.

Cavus was arrested and imprisoned shortly after the incident.

The Kurdish conflict in Turkey has claimed some 37,000 lives since 1984 when the rebel Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) took up arms for self-rule in the predominantly Kurdish southeast.