A Turkish source confirmed to Sky News Arabi on Thursday that ISIS leader Abul Hassan al-Qurashi had been arrested during a special security operation in Istanbul, which sheds light on the extremist leader. The organization whose “leadership” has been arrested for only a few months as the first living leader of ISIL and is considered a “treasure of secrets”.
On February 3, US President Joe Biden announced that ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi had been killed in a US military strike in the Atma area of northwestern Idlib province.
Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi was the second person to hold the title of “caliph” in this extremist organization and succeeded Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in 2019.
The ending was similar for each of them, as they were killed by blowing themselves up and their family members during an American raid on a hideout in northern Syria.
Although ISIS usually announces the “caliph” of the leadership quickly, this time the announcement of Abu al-Hassan al-Qurashi’s name was postponed and his identity was a matter of speculation for some time.
It is worth noting that ISIL named its leaders in a short time, because only 5 days after al-Baghdadi was killed at the end of October 2019, the leadership mission of this organization was handed over to al-Qurashi.
Who is the arrested leader of ISIL?
The announcement of the appointment of Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi was published in a recorded audio message that the organization posted on the Internet weeks after the assassination of Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi.
The audio file stated that allegiance to Abu al-Hassan al-Qurashi was “based on the will of Sheikh Abu Ibrahim and he accepted the allegiance,” indicating that Abu Bakr al-Qurashi had appointed him as his successor. Before his death
Abul Hassan al-Qurashi is “the brother of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the former leader of the organization,” said two Iraqi security officials and a Western security source.
“The real name of the new leader on Friday is Awad al-Badri,” the two officials told Reuters, noting that he was of Iraqi nationality and was al-Baghdadi’s older brother.
The Western security official, for his part, confirmed that the two men were in fact brothers, but did not specify which one was bigger.
However, there is no confirmed information about the current leader of the organization and whether Abul Hassan Al-Qurashi or someone else is secretly leading the organization.
Little is known about al-Badri, but he is close to the mysterious Iraqi militias that were hardened in the fighting and emerged after the 2003 US-led invasion.
“Al-Badri is an extremist who joined extremist groups in 2003 and was known as al-Baghdadi’s permanent personal companion and legal adviser,” said an Iraqi security official.
“Al-Badri has long been the chairman of the ISIL Council, a leadership group that manages strategic leadership issues and decides who will take over the caliphate if the caliph is killed or arrested,” he added.
An investigation conducted by Hisham al-Hashimi, a late Iraqi expert on ISIL, published on the Internet in 2020, states that “al-Badri was the speaker of the five-member council.”
Iraqi security officials and analysts noted that the new ISIL leader “will follow suit, trying to carry out attacks throughout Iraq and Syria, and may have a say in how these attacks are carried out before taking immediate action.” . ” Capture.
“Al-Badri recently went to Iraq from the Syrian border where he was hiding,” an Iraqi security official who spoke to Reuters added.
A report written in December by the UN sanctions monitoring team found that al-Badri had “inherited control of significant financial resources” prior to his arrest.
“Recent surveys estimate the group’s reserves at between $ 25 million and $ 50 million,” the report said, adding that ISIL was spending more than it received, relying on “extortion, opportunism, looting and kidnapping for ransom.” .
“Al-Badri has two other brothers, one of whom has been detained by Iraqi security forces for years,” the Iraqi security official said. “The whereabouts of the second brother are unknown, but he is also likely to be an extremist.”
In the past two years, ISIL has lost its most prominent leaders, including its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed in a US military operation in northern Syria in 2019, and Sami Jassim al-Jubouri, a finance official. Arrested in northwestern Syria in 2021, and the mastermind of the plan to attack the Ghoran prison in Syria, Mohammed Abdul Awad, was arrested in December 2021 in northeastern Syria.
The heir to al-Qaeda in Iraq is rooted in the 2003 uprising that toppled Saddam Hussein.
From the ruins of the civil war and the heart of chaos in neighboring Syria, the Islamic State was formed in its current form in the last decade, and in 2014 took control of large areas of Iraq and Syria.
Al-Baghdadi declared the caliphate that year from a mosque in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, calling himself the “caliph of all Muslims.”
The brutal rule of ISIS, which has killed and executed thousands of people based on a limited interpretation of Islam, ended in 2017 with the defeat of Iraqi and international forces in Mosul.
Thousands of his fighters have been hiding in remote areas, mostly in recent years, but can still carry out large-scale guerrilla-style attacks.
Source: Lebanon Debate
