Lara Villalón Istanbul

Istanbul

Updated Tuesday, March 26, 2024-12:48

Turkey has launched several

macro police operations

against alleged members of the Islamic State, days after a cell of the organization carried out an attack near Moscow, causing 139 deaths and almost two dozen injuries. During the morning of Tuesday, Turkish security forces carried out a raid in thirty provinces of the country to arrest

147 suspects

, announced the Minister of the Interior, Ali Yerlikaya. Last Sunday another forty alleged militants were arrested in another operation. Yerlikaya pointed out that in the last ten months "2,919 suspects have been arrested

, of which 692 were placed in preventive detention

. "

Interior noted that he believes the suspects would have carried out activities "within the ISIS organization in the past" or "armed activities in conflict zones." Turkish authorities, however, did not reveal any further details about the identity or nationality of the suspects.

The arrests come shortly after it was announced that two of the perpetrators of the attack on Crocus City Hall outside Moscow traveled to Russia from Turkey.

The Russian media Ria Novosti revealed the identity of one of the perpetrators of the attack, Shamsidin Fariduni, from Tajikistan, who

would have passed through Istanbul between the end of February and the beginning of March

, before leaving for Russia. Fariduni posted images of his stay in Istanbul on social media, with photographs of himself in Aksaray, a busy neighborhood of the metropolis. "I heard a sermon on Telegram (social network) from a preacher. Then the assistant (of the preacher) wrote to me. He wrote to me on Telegram, without surnames, without anything. He offered me money. Five hundred thousand (Russian rubles, about 5,000 euros).

Kill, no matter who," Fariduni declared during interrogation.

The other suspect who passed through Turkey is Saidakram Rajabalizoda, who arrived in Istanbul in early January and stayed in the country for twenty days. "The two individuals were free to move without obstacles between Russia and Turkey because there was no arrest warrant against them," a Turkish security source told the AFP agency, after denying that the suspects were radicalized on Turkish soil due to their "short stay" in the country.

The attack in Moscow was carried out by a group of militants from the Islamic State of Khorasan, a branch of the organization that emerged in 2014, with a presence in Central Asian countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and parts of Iran. .

The Islamic State has carried out major attacks in Turkey in the last decade

, the most serious at one of Istanbul's airports in June 2016, in which 41 people were killed, and an attack on a nightclub on New Year's Eve in 2017, which caused 39 fatalities.

At the end of January this year, two members of the organization carried out an attack inside a Catholic church in Istanbul during a Sunday mass. One person died in the attack although the attack could have been much more serious, because one of the attackers' weapon jammed.