One of the most popular nightclubs in İstanbul, Reina, was demolished by municipal workers on Monday almost five months after it became the scene of a terrorist attack in which 39 people were killed on New Year’s day.
The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed responsibility for the attack.
Abdulkadir Masharipov, an Uzbek citizen who is accused of killing 39 people at the nightclub with an automatic weapon, was apprehended in a joint operation carried out by the İstanbul police and Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT) in İstanbul’s Esenyurt district in mid-January.
In an interview with the Habertürk daily in late January, Ali Ünal, one of the partners of the nightclub, said he does not feel like restarting the nightclub in a place where so many people were massacred. “I do not want to sell entertainment to people where that many people died,” he said, adding that they sent the bodies of the victims to all parts of the world after the massacre.
Most of the victims of the Reina attack were foreigners.