Aides gave info on terror chief
BAGHDAD: In their long hunt for Abu Bakr al-baghdadi, Iraqi intelligence teams secured a break in February 2018 after one of the Islamic State leader’s top aides gave them information on how he escaped capture for so many years, said two Iraqi security officials.
Baghdadi would sometimes hold strategy talks with his commanders in moving minibuses packed with vegetables in order to avoid detection, Ismael al-ethawi told officials after he was arrested by Turkish authorities and handed to the Iraqis.
“Ethawi gave valuable information which helped the Iraqi multi-security agencies team complete the missing pieces of the puzzle of Baghdadi’s movements and places he used to hide,” one of the Iraqi security officials said.
“Ethawi gave us details on five men, including him, who were meeting Baghdadi inside Syria and the different locations they used,” he told Reuters.
Turning militants such as Ethawi was critical to the agents trying to track Baghdadi.
Ethawi, who holds a PHD in Islamic Sciences, was considered by Iraqi intelligence officials to be one of the leader’s top five aides.
He joined al Qaeda in 2006 and was arrested by US forces in 2008 and jailed for four years. Baghdadi later tasked Ethawi with key roles such as delivering religious instructions and the selection of IS commanders. After the group largely collapsed in 2017, Ethawi fled to Syria with his Syrian wife.
Another turning point came earlier this year during a joint operation in which US, Turkish and Iraqi intelligence agents captured senior IS leaders.
“They gave us all the locations where they were meeting with Baghdadi inside Syria,” one official said.