Turkish officials say the man suspected of carrying out the New Year’s Eve attack on a nightclub in Istanbul was trained in Afghanistan.
The suspect identified as Abdulkadir Masharipov, was believed to have entered Turkey in January 2016.
The Police say he has confessed to the crime and his fingerprints match those found at the scene.
Two pistols, mobile phone SIM cards, and $197,000 in cash were also seized, Sahin said.
Dogan news agency published a photo of the alleged attacker with a black eye, a cut above his eyebrow and bloodstains on his face and t-shirt. It broadcast footage showing plain-clothes police leading a man in a white sweater to a waiting car.
He was being questioned at Istanbul police headquarters, while other people were detained in raids across the city targeting Uzbek Islamic State cells, the state-run Anadolu news agency said.
The gunman appeared to have repeatedly changed addresses before and after the attack. Remaining in Istanbul, he evaded a 16-day nationwide manhunt that included operations in cities from Izmir on the Aegean coast, to Konya in central Anatolia, and Hatay near the southern border with Syria.
“Five addresses were tracked and operations were carried out against them. He was found at one of the five addresses,” Sahin said.
It appeared Masharipov and those seized with him had moved to the Esenyurt address three days ago, he said.
Masharipov had first rented an apartment in Basaksehir, another outlying Istanbul district, before switching addresses a day or two before the attack, the Istanbul governor said.
About 50 people have been detained in raids on 152 addresses since the shooting. Investigators analyzed 7,200 hours of camera footage in the search and police received more than 2,000 tip-offs, Sahin said.
People from Israel, France, Tunisia, Lebanon, India, Belgium, Jordan and Saudi Arabia were among the 39 people who died in the attack at the Reina club.
