A Turkish man accused of firing in the air outside an Armenian church claimed Wednesday his real target had been Patriarch Mesrob II, the spiritual leader of the tiny Armenian community, the Anatolia news agency reported.

"I had prepared it for (Mesrob) Mutafyan II," Volkan Karova shouted to reporters here as he and fellow suspect Yılmaz Can Özalp were being escorted to the prosecutor's office to give their testimony, the agency reported.

It was not clear whether he had intended to physically attack the patriarch or scare him. Later Wednesday, a court charged the two men with "threatening by firing shots" and "carrying an unlicensed gun" and sent them to jail pending trial, the agency said. The pair were arrested late Sunday just hours after two men fired a shot in the air outside a church in the city's Kumkapı district. At the time, a ceremony was being held for slain ethnic Armenian journalist Hrant Dink.

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