Turkey nightclub gunman’s trial begins
Masharipov, who faces 40 life sentences, and his wife are among 57 due to appear in court
An Uzbek citizen who confessed to killing 39 people at an Istanbul nightclub in a New Year gun attack went on trial in Istanbul yesterday.
Proceedings got under way at Istanbul’s Silivri prison, where Abdulkadir Masharipov faces 40 life sentences – one for each of the victims – and the massacre itself.
Fifty-seven suspects are due to go on trial, including Masharipov’s wife Zarina Nurullayeva, who is a suspected accomplice and risks similar penalties to her husband. All but six are being held in custody.
Masharipov was captured in a huge police operation and analysts say his evidence in confessions have helped Turkish authorities to break up a network of extremist cells in the city.
He is facing charges ranging from “attempting to destroy constitutional order”, “membership of an armed terrorist organisation”, to “murdering more than one person”.
After taking a taxi to the Reina nightclub on the shores of the Bosphorus, Masharipov shot dead a security guard before walking inside firing his AK47 indiscriminately at revellers while setting off grenades.
With some survivors even jumping into the Bosphorus in panic, Masharipov, 34 at the time of the attack, slipped away from the scene as he merged into the crowds, triggering fears he could strike again.
The ISIL extremist group, which at the time controlled areas of Turkey’s neighbours Iraq and Syria, later claimed responsibility for the attack.
But after a 17-day manhunt that involved 2,000 police who watched 7,200 hours of video footage, the Turkish authorities detained Masharipov in the residential Istanbul neighbourhood of Esenyurt.
The authorities said Masharipov had trained in Afghanistan and confessed to the attack after receiving orders from ISIL in the Syrian city of Raqqa.
The order was given by a senior Syria-based Russian ISIL extremist named Islam Atabiev – code-named Abu Jihad.
Of the 39 killed in the attack, 27 were foreigners, including citizens of Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iraq and Morocco who had gone to the club to celebrate New Year. Seventy-nine people were wounded.
Masharipov, who used the ISIL code name Abu Mohammed Horasani, was just one of several nationals of the former Soviet state of Uzbekistan implicated in attacks this year.
In October, an Uzbek man used a lorry to mow down people on a New York street, ultimately killing eight, and an Uzbek national was arrested after a lorry attack in Stockholm in April that killed four people.
The overwhelmingly Muslim Central Asian state has been ruled since independence under the tight secular regime of Islam Karimov, who clamped down on Islamist dissent and died in September last year.
The majority of the other suspects on trial are also foreigners, including Uighur Chinese and other nationals of Central Asian states.
Istanbul and Ankara remain under tight security and the authorities repeatedly claim that plots have been foiled and hundreds of suspects detained.
The Reina nightclub, once the haunt of Istanbul football stars was demolished in May.
Turkey under president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been accused by its western allies of not doing enough to halt the rise of ISIL. That claim are denied by the Turkish authorities, who note that ISIL has been listed as a terrorist organisation in the country since 2013.