Asia

Home page

Asia

Top Al-Baghdadi aide gave key information to eliminate Daesh leader

28 October 2019 10:44 (UTC +04:00)

One of Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s top aides, Ismael al-Ethawi, revealed to Iraqi intelligence how the mastermind of numerous terrorist attacks and executions managed to escape capture for many years in February 2018, Reuters reports, citing an Iraqi security official. The breakthrough came after Turkish authorities arrested al-Ethawi and handed him over to the Iraqis, APA reports citing Sputnik.

“Ethawi gave valuable information which helped the Iraqi multi-security agency team complete the missing pieces of the puzzle of Baghdadi’s movements and places he used to hide. Ethawi gave us details on five men, including himself, who were meeting with al-Baghdadi inside Syria and the different locations they used”, the unnamed source told the news agency.
The arrested militant explained that the world’s most sought-after terrorist met his commanders for talks in moving minibuses with vegetables to double back and elude the security services of many countries.

Ethawi, a member of al-Qaeda since 2006, was already arrested and jailed by the US in 2008, before rising to become one of al-Baghdadi’s top five aides, according to Iraqi officials. The terrorist leader tasked the man, who holds a PhD in Islamic Sciences, with selecting commanders and formulating religious instructions. After international forces countered Daesh, Ethawi, who was married to a Syrian woman, fled there.

Apart from him, Iraqi officials are said to have obtained key information to find al-Baghdadi earlier this year, after they tracked and captured five senior Daesh leaders in a joint operation with US and Turkish operatives.

“They gave us all the locations where they were meeting with Baghdadi inside Syria and we decided to coordinate with the CIA to deploy more sources inside these areas. In mid-2019 we managed to locate Idlib as the place where Baghdadi was moving from village to village with his family and three close aides”, an Iraqi official told Reuters.
Ethawi was spotted at an Idlib marketplace by informants and followed to al-Baghdadi’s hideaway.

“We passed the details to the CIA and they used a satellite and drones to watch the location for the past five months”, the official said, noting that the terrorist had been seen leaving the location with his family on a minibus and travelling to a nearby village just two days before meeting his demise.