Turkey says New Year's nightclub attacker captured in Istanbul

[January 17, 2017]  By Daren Butler

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish police have captured the gunman who killed 39 people in an Istanbul nightclub on New Year's Day at a hideout in an outlying suburb of the city after a two-week manhunt, officials said on Tuesday.

Istanbul Governor Vasip Sahin named the man as Abdulgadir Masharipov and said he was born in 1983 in Uzbekistan and received training in Afghanistan.

Masharipov, who was captured with four others overnight, had admitted his guilt and his fingerprints matched those at the scene, Sahin said.

"He knew four languages and was well-educated," Sahin told a news conference.

There were strong indications he entered Turkey illegally through its eastern borders in January 2016 and it was clear the attack was carried out on behalf of Islamic State, Sahin said.

The jihadist group claimed responsibility a day after the mass shooting, saying it was revenge for Turkish military involvement in Syria.

Masharipov was captured with an Iraqi man and three women from Africa, one of them from Egypt, in the Esenyurt district on Istanbul's western outskirts, about 30 km (19 miles) from the Reina nightclub.

Two pistols, mobile phone SIM cards, and $197,000 in cash were also seized, Sahin said.

Dogan news agency published a photo of the alleged attacker with a black eye, a cut above his eyebrow and bloodstains on his face and t-shirt. It broadcast footage showing plain-clothes police leading a man in a white sweater to a waiting car.

He was being questioned at Istanbul police headquarters, while other people were detained in raids across the city targeting Uzbek Islamic State cells, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.

The gunman appeared to have repeatedly changed addresses before and after the attack. Remaining in Istanbul, he evaded a 16-day nationwide manhunt that included operations in cities from Izmir on the Aegean coast, to Konya in central Anatolia, and Hatay near the southern border with Syria.

"Five addresses were tracked and operations were carried out against them. He was found at one of the five addresses," Sahin said.

It appeared Masharipov and those seized with him had moved to the Esenyurt address three days ago, he said.

Masharipov had first rented an apartment in Basaksehir, another outlying Istanbul district, before switching addresses a day or two before the attack, the Istanbul governor said.

About 50 people have been detained in raids on 152 addresses since the shooting. Investigators analyzed 7,200 hours of camera footage in the search and police received more than 2,000 tip-offs, Sahin said.

Members of the Turkish police special forces stand guard at the police headquarters in Istanbul, Turkey, January 17, 2017. REUTERS/Murad Sezer

"WAR WITH TERROR" WILL CONTINUE

"I congratulate our police who caught the perpetrator of the Ortakoy massacre," Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus, who is also the government spokesman, said on social network Twitter.

"Our war with terror and the powers behind it will continue to the end," he said.

On Jan. 1, the attacker shot his way into the Reina nightclub and opened fire with an automatic rifle. He reloaded his weapon several times and shot the wounded as they lay on the ground.

Turks as well as visitors from several Arab nations, India and Canada were among those killed in the attack.

NATO member Turkey is part of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State and launched an incursion into neighboring Syria in August to drive the radical Sunni militants, and Kurdish militia fighters, away from its borders.

The jihadist group has been blamed for at least half a dozen attacks on civilian targets in Turkey over the past 18 months. But, other than assassinations, the new year attack was the first it has directly claimed.

Masharipov was caught in an apartment at a housing complex in Esenyurt at around 11 pm (2000 GMT) on Monday.

The shooting in Istanbul's Ortakoy neighborhood, an upscale district on the Bosphorus shore, followed a year in which Turkey was shaken by a series of attacks by radical Islamist and Kurdish militants and by a failed coup.

President Tayyip Erdogan has said the attack, which targeted a club popular with local celebrities and moneyed foreigners, had been being exploited to try to divide the largely Sunni Muslim nation.

(Editing by Nick Tattersall/Jeremy Gaunt and Timothy Heritage)

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