A French citizen of Turkish origin has been arrested on charges of involvement in planning an attack on the popular Reina nightclub in İstanbul on New Year’s Day that claimed the lives of 39 people.
According to a statement from the Burdur Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office on Tuesday, the suspected planner of the Reina attack, identified as A.S., was arrested in İstanbul on Sunday.
Prosecutors who interrogated A.S. found a rental contract in his possession for the apartment where Reina attack gunman Abdulkadir Masharipov had stayed.
Masharipov was captured in a police operation at an apartment in İstanbul’s Esenyurt district last month. He admitted in his testimony that he perpetrated the attack upon an order from the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
A.S. had reportedly been living in France since 2009, and an investigation was launched into him by the Burdur Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office on Jan. 10 in connection to the Reina attack.