MİT captures five senior ISIL militants

ANKARA

Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MİT) has captured five senior ISIL members in northern Syria, including the terrorist group’s so-called leader of the zone where the Turkish army launched Operation Peace Spring in 2019.

According to local reports published on Dec. 1, MİT teams conducted an operation with the local security forces in northern Syria and captured five ISIL members along with their weapons and ammunition.

The timing of the operation was not mentioned.

The security officers said, one of the captured ISIL members was Mohammed Halid Ali, code-named “Abu Saif Tadmuri.”

The Turkish army launched a military operation named “Peace Spring” in Aleppo, Hasakah and Raqqa between Oct. 9 and Nov. 25, 2019. Ali is said to be the leader of this zone, consisting of three governorates.

“Mohammed Salih code-named ‘Abu Omar Korani,’ participated in various ISIL attacks,” the officers said.

Two of the people captured were in ISIL’s assassination teams and one was an ISIL member responsible for explosives in the Peace Spring Operation zone.

In 2013, Türkiye became one of the first countries to declare ISIL a terrorist group.

The country has since been attacked by the terror group multiple times, with over 300 people killed and hundreds more injured in at least 10 suicide bombings, seven bomb attacks, and four armed assaults.

In response, Türkiye launched anti-terror operations at home and abroad to prevent further attacks.

Türkiye said in September that security forces had arrested a “senior executive” of ISIL known as Abu Zeyd, whose real name was Bashar Khattab Ghazal al-Sumaidai.

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said a U.N. Security Council report published in July identified Sumaidai as “one of the senior executives of the [ISIL] terrorist organization.”

“In his interrogation, he also stated that he was a so-called ’qadi’ of the so-called ministry of education and ministry of justice,” Erdoğan said.

A qadi is a judge in a sharia court.