Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi did not disclose details of the operation, although in a statement posted on Twitter, he said Jassim was detained outside Iraq. He did not reveal the place or date of Jasim’s arrest.
“While our [Iraqi Security Forces] Nayaks focused on securing elections, their [Iraqi National Intelligence Service] Allies were conducting a complex external operation to capture Sami Jasim, who was in charge of Daesh finances, and a deputy of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” al-Kadhimi said.
According to Iraqi security expert Fadel Abu Raghif, Jasim, also known as “Abu Asiya”, served as the terrorist group’s financial observer under al-Baghdadi since 2015. He lived in Mosul in 2012 until he met with Baghdadi in the same year, Abu Raghif told CNN.
In 2015, the US Treasury Department labeled Jasim as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist, a designation that places financial sanctions on terrorists and those who provide aid to terrorists or acts of terrorism.
In 2016, the Kurdistan Region Security Council (KRSC) reported that Jasim and an associate were killed in a joint operation with US special forces.
However, in 2019, the US State Department’s “Rewards for Justice” program placed a $5 million bounty on Jasim (also known as Sami Jasim Muhammad al-Jaboor) and two other senior ISIS leaders, demonstrating that While US officials believed he was still alive. . . “Muhammad al-Jaburi has been instrumental in managing the finances for ISIS terrorist operations,” the State Department said.
Baghdadi became the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) in 2010. In 2013, the ISI announced its absorption of the al Qaeda-backed terrorist group in Syria, and Baghdadi said that his group would now be known as the Islamic State. Iraq and the Levant. (ISIL or ISIS).
Later that year, Baghdadi’s followers entered Raqqa for the first time. It launched its ambitions in Syria, and established an Islamic “caliphate” in June 2014.
They had rules, an army and briefly a currency, yet three years later were reduced to fighting for the purpose of a major offensive against the scraps of Mosul in Iraq and their actual capital in Raqqa.
ISIS’s control over Mosul officially broke in July 2017, when the then Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced that troops had reoccupied the metropolis.
CNN’s Cara Fox, Ryan Brown and Phil Mattingly contributed reporting.