The news came shortly after midday. During the night of Monday, March 25, and the morning of Tuesday, March 26, Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya announced the arrest of 147 suspected militants of the Islamic State (ISIS) organization in 30 cities across the country. This spectacular raid followed Sunday's coordinated raids, which resulted in 40 arrests across eight cities, and an additional 24 arrests in eight different locations on Saturday. In all, 211 people have been arrested and detained since the attack on the Crocus City Hall in the Moscow suburbs, claimed by the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISIS-K), the jihadist group's affiliate in Afghanistan.

On his X account, Yerlikaya underscored his determination to fight "Daesh terrorists" and recounted the 1,329 operations conducted against this group by Turkish police forces since June 1, 2023. According to his tally, 2,919 suspects have been apprehended and questioned, 692 of whom have been jailed and charged.

These announcements came as Russian media reported that two of the alleged perpetrators of the attack on the outskirts of Moscow had traveled to Russia from Turkey. As soon as the first images of their arrest were released, one of them, Shamsiddin Fariduni, originally from Tajikistan, could be seen saying that he had traveled from Turkey to Russia on March 4, in a video shared at the time of his capture. According to the Russian news agency RIA Novosti, the man posted eight photos of Istanbul on social media. The photos were taken in Fatih, at the heart of the historic peninsula, in the old and highly conservative district of Aksaray, known for its refugees, Gulf tourists, small-time vendors and maze of hotels. In one of the photos, Fariduni appeared to be taking a selfie inside a large and tall mosque, presumably the Fatih Mosque.

Initially, neither the Turkish nor the Russian authorities commented on the visit to the Bosphorus megalopolis. It was only on Tuesday that a Turkish security services official, speaking anonymously to AFP, provided details that raised more questions than they answered. The attack's two alleged perpetrators had made a return trip to Turkey, he said, to renew their residence permits in Russia. They "were able to travel freely between Russia and Turkey since there was no warrant for their arrest," he was keen to point out. He also insisted that the men had not been on Turkish soil long enough to have been radicalized and that they had returned to Russia at the beginning of March on the same flight.

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