Nightclub suspect held

ISTANBUL: Turkish police have captured the suspected gunman who killed 39 people in an Istanbul nightclub on New Year’s Day at a hideout in an outlying suburb of the city after a two-week manhunt, officials claimed yesterday.

Istanbul governor Vasip Sahin named the man as Abdulgadir Masharipov and said he was born in 1983 in Uzbekistan and received training in Afghanistan.

Masharipov, who was captured with four others overnight, had admitted his guilt and his fingerprints matched those at the scene, Sahin said. “He knew four languages and was well-educated,” Sahin told a news conference.