The court ruled Monday there was no evidence to determine which of the defendants had actually committed the alleged crimes, attorney Reyhan Yalcindag told AFP.

The 34-year-old woman, known only as S.E., claimed she was blindfolded when she was tortured and raped, leading the prosecution to charge all 405 soldiers who served during that period in two paramilitary stations in the southeastern province of Mardin where she claims she was abused in the early 1990s.

"We will appeal the ruling and if we fail again, we will take the case to the European Court of Human Rights," Yalcindag said.

S.E. says she was tortured and raped by paramilitary troops each time she was detained in November 1993 and in March and August 1994, a period of intense fighting in the region between separatist Kurdish rebels and the army.

In the last incident, she lost consciousness and came to after nine days in hospital.

The trial, which started in October 2003, was moved from Mardin to the northern town of Sungurlu on security grounds.

Turkish security forces have faced widespread accusations of human rights abuses in their fight against the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), blacklisted as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, which took up arms for self-rule in the mainly Kurdish southeast in 1984.

But the authorities have been reluctant to look into such cases and convictions of security personnel for torture or other abuses have been rare.

Cases of rights abuses are seen as a test for Turkey's commitment to respect democratic norms in its quest to join the European Union.

The Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture said in a report earlier this month that abuse of prisoners in Turkey remained a problem, even though it was "on the decline."

S.E., who was never officially charged with any crime, suffered severe psychological problems and moved to live in western Turkey. From there she managed to win asylum in Germany, where she is still living, in the northwestern town of Bochum.