"I think that he was at fault and has responsibility for the deaths of many people," prosecutor Ali Erbay told AFP by telephone.

He said he had yet to level official charges against Serafettin Bozkus, the owner of the Boskus Insaat company, which built the collapsed public boarding school in the village of Celtiksuyu.

Erbay said the contractor would be charged under articles related to crimes of murder by negligence, which carry jail sentences.

Under the toughest of them he faces a minimum four year jail term if found guilty, Erbay said.

The disaster in the boarding house triggered a public outcry over the poor quality of construction in quake-prone Turkey and the inefficiency of state control, a problem which first came to public attention in 1999 when two consecutive quakes killed some 20,000 people in the country's northwest.

SPACE.WIRE