Iraqi security forces have captured the man once dubbed “Isis’s finance minister” in a cross-border operation, the Iraqi prime minister announced on Monday.
Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi said on Twitter that Iraqi intelligence forces had apprehended Sami Jassim Mohammad al-Jubouri, an Iraqi leader of the Islamist terrorist group’s so-called caliphate or Islamic state, in a “complex external operation”.
Kadhimi did not specify in which country Jubouri had been caught. Although the Iraqi government declared Isis had been defeated in December 2017, the group — which once seized large cities across Syria and Iraq in an area the size of Great Britain — has not been eradicated. It remains active in parts of Iraq and eastern Syria but is a shadow of the force that once ruled its self-declared Islamic state with brutal violence.
Rasha al-Aqeedi, senior analyst at the Newlines Institute, said that capturing the group’s leaders remained important.
“The seniors in Isis, it is important to bring them down one way or another because they’re the most experienced, and if Isis was ever to make a comeback, it would rely on their expertise,” said Aqeedi. “Once they’re captured, the organisation loses a strong, powerful pinpoint person in communication and networking.”
While it no longer commands any territory, some Isis militants are still holed up in rural parts of Iraq and Syria.
And despite an 83-country, US-led international military coalition established to defeat the Sunni extremists, the group continues to mount deadly attacks — albeit at a much reduced scale. In July, it claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in Baghdad that killed about 30 people.
Jubouri was a veteran member of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the group that predated Isis. He went on to become “instrumental in managing finances for Isis’s terrorist operations”, according to the US state department, which had offered a $5m reward for information leading to his capture.
