Suspected Al Qaeda supporters arrested in Turkey
By DPA, IANSWednesday, October 27, 2010
ISTANBUL - Turkish police have arrested 12 individuals in Istanbul and Turkey’s east suspected of supporting Al Qaeda, the Turkish media reported Wednesday.
The suspects were rounded up in simultaneous operations in Istanbul and Van, a city near Turkey’s border with Iran. According to the state-run Anatolian Agency, the police found weapons and bomb-making materials during the operations.
The arrests came only a few days after Turkish police arrested four men who are suspected of fundraising for Al Qaeda militants fighting NATO troops in Afghanistan and another suspected of developing software that could be used to disrupt the work of aerial drones being used there.
Some 120 suspected Al Qaeda supporters were arrested in an operation in Turkey’s southeast last January. A group of Turks who had been trained by Al Qaeda were behind the 2003 bombings in Istanbul of two synagogues, the British consulate and a British bank building. Fifty seven people were killed in those attacks.
