Police Arrest Istanbul New Year’s Eve Attacker
Local Editor
The suspect behind a deadly New Year's Eve attack on a club in Turkey has been detained by police following a lengthy manhunt.
According to Turkey's state-run TRT network early on Tuesday, Abdulkadir Masharipov was found during a police raid on a residential apartment in Istanbul's Esenyurt district.
The suspect had been living in apartment rented in the name of a Kyrgyz who was also detained, along with three women and his four-year-old son who has been placed under protection.
Other reports noted that the suspect had been identified three days earlier, and had been under surveillance so his contacts could be identified.
The gunman was also said to be a trained killer who had fought for the Daesh [ISIS/ISIL] terrorist group in Syria.
A total of 35 people have so far been detained in relation to the bloody attack, the latest of whom being two Chinese people hailing from the Uighur community.
The massacre saw a lone gunman making his way into an upscale club shortly after the inauguration of the New Year and starting to mow down revelers. Thirty nine people were killed and nearly 70 others were injured in the shooting spree.
The Takfiri Daesh terrorist group, which is mainly active in Syria and Iraq, claimed responsibility for the attack. Reports later surfaced alleging that the assailant had entered Turkey via Syria last year.
Early in January, Turkey's Hurriyet Daily News cited the assailant's wife, who is also in police custody, as saying in her testimony that she learned about the attack from the TV, alleging she didn't even know that her husband was a Daesh sympathizer let alone a terrorist.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
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