Iraq arrests 5 senior ISIS officials with U.S. help

BAGHDAD — Iraq has arrested five senior members of the Islamic State, including a top aide to the militant group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in an operation that involved U.S. and Turkish intelligence support, authorities here said.

The capture of the men, two Syrians and three Iraqis, represents a breakthrough in the hunt for alBaghdadi, experts said Thursday, and underscores the deep security cooperation within the American-led coalition against the Islamic State despite massive political tensions that are roiling the region.

One of the men, Ismail al-Ithawi, who goes by the alias Abu Zaid al-Iraqi, is considered part of al-Baghdadi’s inner circle and was responsible for financial, religious and security portfolios across the group’s territory in Iraq and Syria, said Hisham al-Hashimi, an expert on Islamic State who advises the Iraqi government.

“This is the operation that broke the skull of the Islamic State. Other operations were just breaking bones,” said Hashimi, who is regularly briefed by Iraqi intelligence officials.

“Soon, Baghdadi will be killed or captured,” he said.

Iraqi and U.S. officials have long said that they believe al-Baghdadi is hiding in the last area in Syria that the Islamic State controls, close to the border with Iraq.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Thursday that the information gleaned from Ithawi had led to two Iraqi airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Syria.

Hashimi said Ithawi also provided banking information to Iraqi and American interrogators that has Al-Baghdadi helped cut off valuable sources of funding for the Islamic State, which is also known as ISIS.

The arrests were announced on Iraqi state television late Wednesday and later detailed by the New York Times.

Early Thursday, President Donald Trump touted the detentions in a tweet, saying: “Five Most Wanted leaders of ISIS just captured!”

The spokesman for the anti-Islamic State coalition, Army Col. Ryan Dillon, said in a Twitter post that the arrests were a “significant” blow to the group and underscore the level of cooperation between two U.S. allies in the fight against the Islamic State: the Iraqi security forces and the Syrian Democratic Forces.

The breakthrough came in February, according to Hashimi, when Turkish officers arrested Ithawi in Turkey using information provided by Iraq intelligence.

He was then extradited to Iraq, where he faced interrogation by Iraqis and Americans.