Police said details regarding the arrest were under gag order. 

Israeli media reported that authorities arrested five other relatives of the suspect.

Security forces have conducted widespread manhunts since Friday for 31-year-old Nashat Milhem, named as the suspected assailant in the shooting that killed two Israelis and wounded many others at a bar on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv.

The family’s lawyer, Sami Melhem, confirmed that the suspect’s father, Muhammed Milhem, had been arrested however he did not know what the charge was. 

The attorney denied the possibility that the suspect’s father was arrested under suspicion of the obstruction of justice, saying that he fully cooperated in assisting authorities in locating his son.  

The family’s legal representative surmised that the father was arrested in order to place pressure on the suspect to turn himself in. 

When surveillance camera footage of Milhem was made public Friday, Muhammad, a security guard and police volunteer, contacted the police and identified his son as the shooter and said he had stolen his submachine gun to carry out the shooting.

Over the weekend, security forces searched the Milhem family’s home in the Arab Israeli town of Arara in the northern Wadi Ara region.

On Saturday, Muhammed Milhem said in a press conference in front of his house that he was deeply sorry for his son’s actions and stands with Israel in this dark time.

“I was born in Israel,” he said. “I am a law abiding citizen. I heard my son was in Tel Aviv and I heard what happened and what he had done. I did not educate him in such a way, and I am deeply sorry by what he has done.”

The father told police that he received an anonymous phone call from someone who told him to check if his licensed firearm, which he uses as a guard in a security firm, was in possession at his home. He checked and found his firearm but then realized that it may have been his son, the suspected shooter, who made the anonymous call.

“When I heard what happened I felt personally responsible, I headed to the police station and I helped out with every matter of security,” he said, adding his well-wishes to the victims of the shooting. 

“I am a part of everyone’s suffering; it doesn’t matter whether you are an Arab or a Jew,” the father concluded, as his voice began to quiver. 

Also on Saturday, police confiscated a computer belonging to Milhem and arrested two of his brothers on suspicion of having assisted in the attack. 

One of the brothers was taken for a remand extension at the Haifa Magistrate’s Court on Saturday night, where his remand was extended by five days in a closed-door hearing.‎