Seventeen Jailed Pending Trial Over Istanbul Airport Attack

Turkish officials have pointed blame at the Islamic State (IS) group for Tuesday’s gun and bomb spree at Ataturk airport, which left 45 people dead, including 19 foreigners.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but the Turkish authorities blamed it on the IS.

On Sunday, police charged 14 suspects, including three foreigners, over the June 28 bombings.

Two of the men targeted the global terminal building, and the third one gunned down people at the parking lot.

Prosecutors have identified two of the three suspected attackers as Russians Rakim Bulgarov and Vadim Osmanov.

Turkish media have identified the strike’s organiser as Akhmed Chatayev, the Chechen leader of an IS cell in Istanbul who reportedly found accommodations for the bombers.

This enhances the chances that the terrorist attack was indeed an ISIS operation and it gives it an even more worldwide or “global” flavor.

He also said that in 2016 alone, 1,654 people had been detained, of which 791 people were foreigners; adding: “Of those detained, 663 have been remanded in custody, of which 371 were foreigners”.

Central Asia’s former Soviet republics have been a major source of foreign militants traveling to fight with Daesh and other extremist groups in Iraq and Syria. Russian Federation fought two wars against Chechen separatists in the North Causcasus in the 1990s, and more recently has fought Islamist insurgents in Dagestan.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has expressed his own conviction that the Islamic State was behind the terror attack, asserting that they “have nothing to do with Islam. Maybe he came and stayed but I don’t know him”, he said.

Turkey, which is a member of the USA -led coalition against Islamic State, faces a number of security threats. It also faces a separate security threat from a Kurdish insurgency in its largely Kurdish southeast.