Money given to Istanbul nightclub attacker came from gunned robbery: Sources

ISTANBUL

Turkish police have identified that the large amount of money found in the house of the attacker of an Istanbul nightclub was from $1.9 million robbed from an Uzbek national by gunmen. 

Three gunmen had robbed an Uzbek-origin person, identified only by the initials O.E., in central Istanbul after he took some $1.9 million, of which was reportedly corporate money, from the customs at the Istanbul Atatürk Airport in June last year. 

Sources said some of the money was given to people linked to the attack on the Reina nightclub, where 39 people were killed by Abdulkadir Masharipov in the early hours of Jan. 1. 

Masharipov was captured in a house in Istanbul on Jan. 17.

Sources said the $197,000 confiscated in a police raid on Masharipov’s house was also part of the money robbed in June. 

An Istanbul prosecutor’s office announced in February that a Turkish-origin French citizen, identified only by the initials A.S., was caught in Istanbul on Feb. 12 as one of the planners of the attack on Reina. 

The attack was claimed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). 

The rental contract of the house that Masharipov resided in was found on A.S.