Iraqi and US officials revealed that an Islamic State leader they captured in Iraq last month was the head of an Islamic State (ISIS) chemical weapons unit who is now being questioned about the group’s use of chemical weapons. Sleiman Daoud al-Afari was an employee of the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's Military Industrialization Authority where his specialty was the development of biological and chemical weapons. In recent months, according to AP, he was working on building a similar branch for ISIS. Last month he was captured by American Special Forces near Tal Afar west of Mosul. The American-led coalition has subsequently been launching airstrikes and special operations raids against targets relating to ISIS's chemical weapons program. According to the New York Times, US defense officials have confirmed that Afari is held in Erbil and being questioned about ISIS plans to use mustard gas. “The man has already told interrogators how IS loaded mustard gas into shells,” BBC reported. ISIS has used chemical weapons in both Iraq and Syria against Kurdish forces. The Kurds were infamously gassed by Saddam Hussein in the town of Halabja in 1988 where 5,000 people were killed in one day. "More than a symbolic attack seems to me to be beyond the grasp of ISIS," Dan Kaszeta, a former US Army chemical officer and Department of Homeland security expert, told AP. "Furthermore, the chemicals we are talking about are principally chlorine and sulfur mustard, both of which are actually quite poor weapons by modern standards."
