Iraqi authorities on Thursday (15/2/2018) said they had succeeded for the first time extraditing one of the highest leaders of the ISIS terrorist group from Turkey.
Ismail Alwan Salman al-Ithawi has been traced to the Sakarya region of Turkey. He was then detained and is now sent back through cooperation between Turkish, Iraqi and US intelligence agents.
The senior officer of ISIS Falcons Membership Unit from Iraq's Interior Ministry told AFP.
"Our unit members have successfully inserted into the group's highest level and finally managed to hold their leader," the official said.
He added that Ithawi, who is from the 55-year-old Ramadi city of Iraq, is a minister of the ISIS group responsible for religious fatwas and leads a committee that appoints senior members.
But the territory of the terrorist group has been wiped out in Iraq and diminishing in Syria thanks to the resistance by both countries.
Now the focus is turning to track the leaders and senior figures of the group as well as the remains of its members.
Ithawi was said to have fled from the group that had been driven out of Syria and now lives by using his sister's name in northern Turkey.
"We asked our ambassador in Ankara to intervene with the Turkish authorities via an arrest warrant issued by an Iraqi court and also a recent photograph of Ismail," the official said.
ISIS has occupied parts of Syria and northern Iraq quickly in 2014 and began to spread terror threats throughout the region for three years.