BAGDHAD: Iraqi security officials have arrested finance minister of Daesh group Sami Jasim Al-Jaburi. Iraqi Prime Minister Musta- fa Al-Kadhimi announced today (Oct 11). Al-Jaburi was wanted by the United States.
The US Rewards for Justice program said Jaburi within Daesh had reportedly served as the equivalent to finance minister, supervising the group’s revenue-generating operations from illicit sales of oil, gas, antiquities and minerals.”
Jaburi, also believed to be the former deputy to the late Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, was arrested by intelligence services outside the borders of Iraq, Kadhimi PM said on Twitter.
He did not specify the location but said Jaburi was captured in a complex external operation. The US had offered a reward of up to $5 million for arresting Jaburi.
In September 2015, the US Treasury Department labelled Jaburi as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. Daesh took a third of Iraq in a lightning offensive in 2014.
Iraq’s government declared victory against the militants in late 2017 after a grinding military campaign backed by a US-led coalition.
Baghdadi was killed in a raid by US special forces in northwestern Syria in October 2019.
Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Arabic al-Dawlah al-Islāmiyyah fī al-Irāq wa al-Shām, Arabic abbreviation Dāish or Daesh, also called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and, since June 2014, the Islamic State, transnational Sunni insurgent group operating primarily in western Iraq and eastern Syria.
First appearing under the name ISIL in April 2013, the group launched an offensive in early 2014 that drove Iraqi government forces out of key western cities, while in Syria it fought both government forces and rebel factions in the Syrian Civil War. In June 2014, after making significant territorial gains in Iraq, the group proclaimed the establishment of a caliphate led by the leader of ISIL, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
International efforts to defeat the group led to its decline, and both Syria and Iraq considered ISIL effectively defeated by November 2017, though ISIL continued to hold a small amount of territory until March 2019. Certain affiliates with only weak ties to ISIL leadership, most notably Islamic State–Khorasan Province (ISKP; also called ISIS-K), remained active elsewhere.
