One of the partners of İstanbul’s Reina nightclub has said that no government official ever called them to show support after an attack on the club by an Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) terrorist on New Year’s Eve that killed 39 people and wounded at least 69 others.
Ali Ünal, in an interview with Esin Övet from the Habertürk daily, said that no one, not even a representative of the Ministry of Tourism and Culture, had called the owners of Reina to encourage them to continue a brand that had a worldwide reputation.
However, Ünal also added that he does not feel like restarting the nightclub in a place where that many people were massacred. “I do not want to sell entertainment to people where that many people died,” he said, adding that they sent the bodies of the victims to all parts of the world after the massacre.
The Turkish government and pro-government media had been critical towards the West for not standing by Turkey after the Reina attack, unlike in the similar Bataclan attack in Paris.
Meanwhile, Abdulkadir Masharipov, the prime suspect in the Jan. 1 massacre at the Reina nightclub who was arrested in a police operation on Jan. 16, has said he has no regrets about the attack, which claimed the lives of 39 people.
“I have no regrets. I would do it again,” Masharipov said during his questioning by the police according to a report in the Hürriyet daily.
Codenamed Ebu Muhammed El Horasani Abdulkav, Masharipov was born in Uzbekistan in 1983 and was trained as a militant in al-Qaeda camps in Afghanistan and later joined ISIL.
