Security services in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region said on Saturday they had arrested the brother of a lawmaker serving in the Turkish parliament for the assassination of a Turkish diplomat in the Iraqi Kurdish regional capital Erbil, Trend reports citing Reuters.
The diplomat was one of at least two people shot dead on Wednesday when a gunman opened fire in a restaurant where Turkish diplomats were dining.
“The Kurdistan Region announced on Saturday the arrest of the man who planned the assassination of a Turkish diplomat in a restaurant in Erbil, less than a week after the attack,” the Asayish internal security service said in a statement.
It did not name the suspect but said “reports indicated” that his sister served as a Kurdish lawmaker in the Turkish parliament. A separate statement from another Iraqi Kurdish security force, the Counter Terrorism Department, gave the suspect’s name as Mazlum Dag.
Turkey’s pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) later confirmed that the man who had been arrested was the brother of one of its lawmakers, Dersim Dag.