Abdulgadir Masharipov
The captured suspect in the Istanbul New Year’s nightclub shooting which left 39 people dead has admitted to carrying out the attack, Istanbul Governor Vasip Sahin stated Tuesday, adding that his fingerprints matched.
Sahin also stated the suspect was found with 197,000 dollars in cash, weapons, magazines, SIM cards and additional materials, according to the Dogan news agency.
The brutal shooting took place just after midnight on January 1 and was claimed by Islamic State. The suspect has been at large ever since, amid a massive manhunt.
The suspect – being identified as Abdulkadir Masharipov – was captured alive in a police raid overnight in Esenyurt, on the European side of Istanbul. Several others were also taken into custody in the operation.
Pro-government daily Sabah and other Turkish outlets ran a photo of the captured suspect, apparently taken in the moments after he was nabbed, showing a bruised and bloody face.
The person in the photo resembles the man seen in a selfie video that emerged in the days after the attack, which showed the chief suspect walking around central Istanbul.
Police suspect the man of spraying bullets inside the waterfront Reina nightclub, killing mostly foreigners and wounding dozens more in an attack later claimed by the extremist group Islamic State.
Sahin stated the suspect is believed to have been born in 1983 in Uzbekistan and received education in Afghanistan.
He arrived in Turkey in 2016. The governor noted that the suspect spoke several languages.