Iraq nabs notorious Daesh operative

Iraqi authorities released a video Friday with the confession of a recently captured Daesh operative who was involved in a notorious incident in which captured Kurdish soldiers were put in cages and paraded around a northern Iraqi city by hooded Daesh fighters.

At the time, early 2015, Daesh was threatening to burn them to death much as they had done two months earlier to a Jordanian pilot who had been captured, caged and then set on fire in Syria. It is not clear how the Kurdish captives were killed.

The captured operative, Jamal Al Mashadani, who was known by the nom de guerre Abu Hamza Al Kurdi, was an officer in President Saddam Hussain’s security apparatus before joining Al Qaida in Iraq after Saddam’s fall. Al Mashadani later shifted his loyalty to Daesh.

He is one of a small number of mid-and higher-level officials to have been captured by the Iraqis, Americans or in the combined efforts of American and Iraqi intelligence services.