Kurdistan
Five suspected ISIS militants were arrested in Erbil. Photo: Rudaw Graphic/screenshots from video confession published by Kurdistan Region Security Council
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — The Kurdistan Region’s security council on Monday announced the arrest of five suspected Islamic State (ISIS) militants in Erbil for reportedly planning to carry out terrorist attacks inside the Region.
“During the investigations, the terrorists admitted that they were planning attacks by planting (improvised explosive devices) and using (pistols equipped with silencers),” the security council published on Monday along with what appears to be a video confession of one of the men arrested.
“Investigations concluded that two members of the cell were not able to enter Kurdistan directly in early February 2021, so they were smuggled into Syria illegally. Then they headed to Turkey and from there to Iran, and from there they entered the town of Ranya and then Erbil,” the statement added.
In the released video “confession”, Yasser Ali Ahmed al-Faraji says he joined ISIS in 2014 at the age of sixteen in Anbar. After the fall of ISIS in Iraq, he claims to have fled to Syria and lived at al-Hol camp “nearly a year”, where he was enlisted to conduct operations in the Kurdistan Region under the leadership of the area’s head, Abu Walid.
The detainee said he, alongside other members of the cell, were smuggled back into Iraq, where he rented a house on the Makhmour road in southwest Erbil’s Mamzawa, eight kilometers away from the Kurdistan Region capital’s city center.
“He [Abu Walid] asked me to dig a hole by my house. I dug a hole in my garden and put a barrel in there so that when equipment arrived, I hid it there,” said Faraji, who said the group was supposed to be sent guns and bombs.
The cell was asked to “investigate” the Makhmour road and plant explosive devices targeting military vehicles, but were arrested prior to receiving the equipment.
Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region Masrour Barzani said the arrests came after a “months-long operation,” urging allies and the global coalition to “recognize the seriousness of this threat, both here and abroad.”
“I am deeply concerned that our intelligence points to ISIS operating from the Al Hol camp, indicating the group is still capable of crossing borders illegally,” he added.
Although ISIS was territorially defeated in Iraq in 2017, remnants of the terror group remain active across the country, particularly in areas disputed between Baghdad and Erbil.
In February, Kurdish forces arrested a member of ISIS in Erbil and handed him over to Baghdad, the Kurdistan Region’s counter-terrorism directorate said.
The Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service (ICTS) in March announced that it had arrested six ISIS militants in two Iraqi provinces and Sulaimani province in the Kurdistan Region.
On Thursday, ISIS claimed in its weekly propaganda newspaper al-Naba that it had killed and injured at least 7 people in 4 attacks in Iraq from April 1 to 7.
Updated 13/04/2021 at 8:53am
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