Oct. 11 (UPI) — Iraqi intelligence agents captured the financial chief of the ISIS terrorist organization, Iraq’s prime minister announced Monday.
Sami Jasim, the organization’s treasurer and deputy of former leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, was captured as Iraq was holding its parliamentary elections, Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi said.
“While our [Iraqi Security Forces] heroes focused on securing the elections, their [Iraqi National Intelligence Service] colleagues were conducting a complex external operation to capture Sami Jasim, who was in charge of [ISIS] finance, and a deputy of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi,” he wrote in a Twitter post.
Sami Jasim Muhammad al-Jaburi, also known as Abu Asya, met al-Baghdadi in Mosul, Iraq, in 2012, two years before the group launched its first successful offensive and declared an Islamic “caliphate” stretching across parts of Iraq and Syria, Iraqi security experts told CNN.
He has run the terror group’s finances since 2015, analysts said.
Al-Baghdadi was killed in October 2017 during a U.S. military operation in northwest Syria.
Jasim was arrested at an unspecified location outside of Iraq’s borders, the Iraqi military said on its official Twitter account.
“The criminal is considered one of the most wanted internationally,” they said, adding that Jasim is close to ISIS’ current leader, Abdullah Qardash.
The United States had offered a $5 million reward for information leading to Jasim’s arrest, calling him “instrumental in managing finances for ISIS’s terrorist operations.”