Sami Jasim Muhammad al-Jaburi, “general supervisor of the financial and economic files” for ISIS, was arrested during a “special operation outside the borders,” the Security Media Cell tweeted.
Jaburi was also a deputy to former ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and is close to the group’s current leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurashi, the military statement added.
The statement did not detail where Jaburi was arrested. An Iraqi military source told AFP he was arrested in Turkey.
The United States offered a $5 million reward for information leading to Jaburi’s arrest, saying he has been “instrumental in managing finances for ISIS’s terrorist operations.”
“While serving as ISIS deputy in southern Mosul in 2014, he reportedly served as the equivalent of ISIS’s finance minister, supervising the group’s revenue-generating operations from illicit sales of oil, gas, antiquities, and minerals,” according to the US Department of State.
ISIS was territorially defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in 2019, but remnants of the group remain a threat on both sides of the border. Attacks by ISIS increased over the summer, according to a Pentagon report released in August, which described the group as “well-entrenched in rural areas of Iraq and Syria.”
The US Treasury estimates ISIS has tens of millions of dollars stashed across Iraq, Syria, and Turkey and “continued to raise funds through extortion of oil smuggling networks in eastern Syria, collecting kidnapping ransoms, looting, and possibly the operation of front companies in both Iraq and Syria,” according to the Pentagon.
Updated at 4:49 pm
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