Esen Fidanlik
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Turkish security forces raided at least 20 addresses in Istanbul and arrested 18 foreign nationals suspected of having ties to Daesh, a A security source told Anadolu Agency (AA) on Thursday, a day after police operations in Adana province in southeast Turkey.
Counterterrorism teams carried out operations to arrest suspected members of the terrorist group who were plotting to launch terrorist attacks, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on communication with them. media. One of the addresses attacked was the Sarıyer neighborhood in Istanbul, about 500 meters from the United States Consulate General. Security forces entered a 4-story building and detained one person in the house.
A wide range of documents relating to the terrorist organization and digital materials have been discovered and seized, the source added.
Turkish security forces caught at least 850 ISIS-related suspects in the first three months of 2021.
In 2013, Turkey became one of the first countries to declare Daesh a terrorist group.
The country has since been attacked by the terrorist group on several occasions, with more than 300 people killed and hundreds more injured in at least 10 suicide attacks, seven bombings and four armed assaults.
In response, Turkey launched counterterrorism operations at home and abroad to prevent further attacks.
Turkey arrested Daesh’s so-called “Turkish emir” Mahmut Özden in August 2020. He planned to carry out an attack on the Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque and target politicians, heads of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). ) and other personalities in Turkey, according to the official investigation.
Police deciphered ISIS’s encrypted messages sent by terror group leaders in Syria and Iraq. The messages contained a wide range of instructions, including the kidnapping of tour groups, prosecutors and MPs, and the attack on Incirlik Air Base in Adana, along with other plans.
In addition, last month a Turkish court sentenced four terrorists to life imprisonment for the deadly ISIS attacks in Istanbul in 2016.
The convicts – Atala al-Hasan al-Mayouf, Fawzi Mohamed Ali, Halil DerviÅŸ and Ahmed al-Hasan – were sentenced to several sentences totaling more than 328 years in prison.
They were awarded 192 years each for helping Nabil Fadli who blew himself up, 128 years for being complicit in the attempted murder of 16 people and eight years and four months for keeping dangerous goods without authorization.
Fadli blew himself up on January 12, 2016, killing 12 people – mostly German tourists – and injuring 16 others in Istanbul’s Sultanahmet district, on the European side of Istanbul, in a terrorist attack by Daesh.
