Turkish security forces foiled the secret office structure of the Daesh terrorist group in the country, which was used to transfer funds to so-called families of martyrs and captives a report said Thursday.
Ankara Counterterrorism squads revealed the structure after detaining senior Daesh figures identified by the initials M.M.A, Y.O., M.J. and H.E., Lebanese, Tunisian and Syrian nationals, respectively and confiscating digital materials during the raids. The digital content had a list of individuals who were receiving funds from Daesh and deciphered bank receipts.
All four suspects were arrested and sent to prison, and terrorist M.M.A., codenamed “Abu Omar” made a series of confessions to the police, Hürriyet daily reported.
The terrorist told police that a man codenamed Refik used to send him a list with the names of women that Daesh would send money to.
“Daesh established a money transfer system to send the money. The funds were sent to individuals through their identity information,” M.M.A told police, adding that he forwarded the bank receipts to the women on the list through Telegram and the women were instructed to go to the stores that the money was transferred to.
He added that they even opened a cosmetics store in Istanbul’s Esenyurt district for the terrorist group.
In January, Turkey arrested a member of Daesh’s execution team in northern Samsun province.
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 multiple times, with over 300 people killed and hundreds more injured in at least 10 suicide bombings, seven bomb attacks and four armed assaults.
In response, Turkey launched counterterrorism operations within and abroad to prevent further attacks. In May, Ankara arrested a Daesh terrorist identified as the right-hand of former terrorist leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
