Turkey arrests foreign Daesh terrorist wanted by France
DAESH terrorist Soumaya Raissi, wanted by France with a Red Notice, was arrested in southern Turkey’s Adana province Friday.
On Oct. 14, security forces in Adana captured Raissi, who is also wanted by Interpol, at her house where she was hiding.
Originally from Tunisia, 30-yearold Raissi was living in the province’s Namık Kemal neighborhood with a fake Syrian identity.
After being taken into custody, the woman was interrogated for two days by security forces. Raissi denied everything in her statement and claimed that she escaped France due to domestic violence committed by her husband.
Raissi was a fugitive and wanted by France for four years. It was revealed that she entered Turkey five months ago from Syria.
Her first husband, Richard Raissi, was captured and arrested in southeastern Gaziantep province back in 2016. He was then evicted and deported from Turkey.
It was also determined that Raissi’s brother-in-law is also a Daesh member.
After escaping to Syria, the terrorist group picked a member for Raissi to marry. She then had a child from this second marriage.
Interpol released a notification on Raissi, expressing that she is capable of committing “dangerous actions” and should be detained as soon as possible.
Turkey recognized Daesh as a terrorist group in 2013, and since then, the country has been attacked numerous times, including 10 suicide bombings, seven bombings and four armed assaults, which have killed 315 people and injured hundreds more.
Previously, Turkish intelligence played a key role in the death of Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi by detaining and extraditing one of his aides to Iraq, who provided U.S. authorities with critical information for locating him.
The country also detained the so-called “Turkey emir” of Daesh, named Mahmut Özden, in August. He was planning to carry out an attack on Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque and target politicians, nongovernmental organization (NGO) heads and other prominent figures in Turkey, according to the official investigation.
Although the terrorist group has been largely defeated in Iraq and Syria, its presence still poses a threat, as individuals following its ideology encourage others to carry out violence.
European analysts have also warned against attacks by Daesh, as attacks by isolated individuals not under the watch of intelligence services have become more common.
YPG RELEASES DAESH MILITANTS
Meanwhile, the PKK terrorist group’s Syrian branch, the YPG, on Thursday released hundreds of Daesh terrorists who had been imprisoned in northern Syria, as part of a general amnesty in the region controlled by the U.S.-backed YPG terrorists.
The 631 detainees had been held on terrorism charges and were the first batch released in an amnesty deal announced recently following calls from Arab tribes in eastern Syria. Another 253 detainees will have their terms cut in half.
The deal could boost laborious cooperation between the YPG terrorists and the Arab tribes that purvey a significant proportion in the military alliance controlling the area.
The YPG currently operates more than two dozen detention facilities scattered across northeastern Syria, holding about 10,000 Daesh terrorists. Among the detainees are about 2,000 foreigners whose home countries have refused to repatriate them, including about 800 Europeans.
Ankara has long objected to the support of NATO ally U.S. for the YPG, a group that poses a threat to Turkey and terrorizes local people, destroying their homes and forcing them to flee.
Under the pretext of fighting Daesh, the U.S. has supported the YPG terrorist group by providing military training and weapons. While underlining that one cannot support a terrorist group in the fight against another, Turkey has continued its own counterterrorism operations, over the course of which it has managed to remove a significant number of terrorists from the region.
The Daesh terrorist group – which at the height of its power in 2014 controlled a third of both Iraq and Syria – lost its last sliver of land last year when the U.S.-backed YPG forces captured the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz. Since then, the terrorists have gone underground, carrying out hit-and-run attacks.
Earlier this month, the YPG said it will allow Syrian citizens to leave a sprawling camp that houses tens of thousands of women and children, many of them linked to Daesh.
Most of the detainees at al-Hol camp are Syrian and Iraqi women and children. Another highly secured tent settlement that is part of the camp is known as the Annex and is home to some 10,000 hard-line Daesh supporters from other countries.
The overpopulated camp is home to a total of 65,000 people. Crime rates have been high inside the camp and some of the women have tried to escape. Dozens of families have left the camp in recent weeks.