A Turkish court arrested 10 out of 15 suspects initially detained by law enforcement for alleged membership in the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), including a person with suspected connections to a deadly attack on a Roman Catholic church in İstanbul on January 28, Turkish media reported on Wednesday.
The attack claimed the life of a Turkish citizen, identified as 52-year-old Tuncer Cihan, who was not a member of the congregation.
The masked attackers fled the scene after the shooting. Following the incident, 51 ISIL suspects were detained in operations across the country in connection with the attack.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced last week that two men who are thought to be members of ISIL had been detained as alleged perpetrators of the attack. One of the suspects, identified only by the initials A.K., is from Tajikistan, while the other, identified as D.T., is from Russia.
The recent operation, coordinated by the İstanbul Police Department’s counterterrorism branch in cooperation with the National Intelligence Organization (MİT), specifically targeted the Turkey network of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan (ISIL-K).
The detainees appeared before a court, with 10 of them arrested, while the remaining five were placed under judicial supervision.
Turkey declared ISIL a terrorist organization in 2013 and has been attacked by the group multiple times since then. A total of 315 people were killed and hundreds more were injured in at least 10 suicide bombings, seven bomb blasts and four armed attacks carried out by ISIL in the country.