Bacca's Turkish murder suspect says guilty plea made under duress

"Three people in a white minibus cornered me in Izmit tunnel; they knocked me out and then killed Bacca. They threatened me and I took the rap," the agency reported the sole murder suspect, 38-year-old Murat Karatas, as saying.

The trial of Karatas, the man suspected of murdering Bacca in northwestern Turkey after he picked her up while hitchhiking to Israel on a mission of peace, began in October 2008.

According to new evidence released on Wednesday, it was claimed that more than two perpetrators may have been involved in the rape and murder of Bacca.

Bacca departed from the Italian city of Milan together with Silvia Moro, an artist friend, on March 8. The two artists had been hitchhiking to the Israeli city of Tel Aviv hoping to send a "messageof peace" to the world.

Pasqualino and Moro separated from each other in Istanbul on March 19, and after March 31, no further contact could be established with Pasqualino. The 33-year-old artist was found dead in a forest near the town of Gebze in the northwestern province of Kocaeli on April 12.