Turkish ‘terror’ suspect is ARRESTED after ‘shooting a relative on Dutch tram “for family reasons” and then firing at anyone who tried to intervene’ killing three…( 5…)
Police release photo of Gökmen Tanis, 37, captured on the tram’s CCTV just minutes before the shooting
Three people have died and five people are injured after the shooting in Utrecht, central Netherlands
Police said the gunman ‘who may have had a terrorist motive’, opened fire on a tram in the city centre
The assailant or assailants fled the scene but police have since arrested a suspect
Tanis family members in Turkey say the person targeted on the tram was a relative of the 37-year-old
Dutch government has raised terrorism threat level to highest possible, and schools are on lockdown
Incident took place just three days after a terror attack on two mosques in New Zealand where 50 were killed
By SARA MALM
DAILYMAIL.COM
18 March 2019
Dutch police have arrested a 37-year-old Turkish man suspected in a deadly ‘terrorist-motivated’ shooting on a tram in the Dutch city of Utrecht, after a huge all-day manhunt which saw schools and business in lockdown.
Gökmen Tanis was allegedly targeting one of his own relatives in this morning’s shooting, which left three people dead and five others injured, and saw the terrorism threat level in Utrecht raised to the highest possible.
Speaking at a press conference on Monday evening, Rob van Bree, the head of operations of the Central Netherlands Police, told reporters: ‘I just heard that the suspect we were hunting has been arrested.’
This was later confirmed by the head of the Dutch counter-terrorism agency Pieter-Jaap Aalbersberg, who tweeted that the threat level for the Utrecht province has been brought back to level four after being raised to five following this morning’s shooting.
‘The NCTV brings the threat level for the province Utrecht back to level four. The reason is the arrest of the main suspect of the shooting. This is where the threat level in the Netherlands is again four,’ the tweet read.
Tanis’ relatives in Turkey told Anadolu news agency that the 37-year-old had opened fire on a relative ‘for family reasons’ and later shot at others trying to intervene.
Earlier today, Dutch police tweeted a photograph of Tanis, believed to have been captured on the tram’s CCTV just four minutes before the incident at 10.45am this morning, and urged the public to ‘look out for him but do not approach.’
This comes after several Dutch newspapers, including Algemeen Dagblad, reported that Tanis had been due in court on March 4 in connection with a rape case, accused of sexually assaulting his victim several times, and threatening to burn down her home.
In 2013, he was suspected of attempted manslaughter by ‘opening fire on a flat’, and in recent years had been accused of committing burglary, shoplifting, drink-driving and assaulting a police officer by spitting them in the face.
The gunman, believed to be Tanis, fled the scene of the shooting in a stolen red Renault Clio, which has since been found abandoned in Utrecht, Holland’s fourth largest city with a population of around 340,000.
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