 who was discovered working at the construction site of a nuclear power plant in southern Turkey under a borrowed ID has been arrested, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.){kind=link}
A suspected member of the terrorist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) who was discovered working at the construction site of a nuclear power plant in southern Turkey under a borrowed ID has been arrested, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
The Mersin Police Department said in a statement that the suspected ISIL member, a Russian national identified only by the initials U.A., was detained in a police operation in Mersin’s Gülnar district, where he was working at the construction site of the Akkuyu nuclear power plant with an ID belonging to another foreign national.
The police said the suspect, who was listed on INTERPOL’s Diffusion system, which flags suspects sought for arrest and extradition by individual countries, was arrested after appearing in court.
It is not known how the suspected ISIL member was able to get a job at the power plant, where security measures are expected to be tight.
The Akkuyu nuclear power plant is the only such facility in Turkey and is being built in Akkuyu, Mersin, by Russian state nuclear firm Rosatom. The plant, whose construction began in 2018, is expected to be fully operational in 2026.
Turkey, which has attracted criticism for allegedly providing a safe haven for ISIL suspects, has recently stepped up its crackdown on alleged members following an armed attack on a Roman Catholic church in İstanbul in late January. ISIL claimed responsibility for the attack.
Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced last week that 147 ISIL suspects were detained in simultaneous raids across 33 provinces.
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.
In December of last year Turkish security forces detained 32 suspects over alleged links to ISIL jihadists who were planning attacks on churches and synagogues as well as the Iraqi Embassy.