A detailed aide of killed ISIL (ISIS) chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been caught in Istanbul.
The Afghan nationwide, solely recognized by the codename ASIM, was detained within the Atasehir district on town’s Asian facet on Wednesday, an Istanbul police assertion stated on Sunday.
Information experiences of the joint operation carried out by Istanbul police and Turkey’s intelligence company stated the suspect had been concerned in serving to cover al-Baghdadi in Syria’s Idlib province after the autumn of the group in 2019.
Al-Baghdadi was killed in a raid on his Syrian hideout by American particular forces in October 2019.
Turkish media revealed {a photograph} of a balding, bearded man in a lightweight coat following the arrest and an earlier picture, purportedly of the identical individual, displaying a long-haired, closely bearded man in army fatigues wielding a curved sword.
State-run Anadolu information company stated ASIM was suspected of organising coaching for ISIL whereas in Syria and Iraq, in addition to serving on its decision-making council.
He arrived in Turkey with a false passport and id card, Turkish media stated.
Turkey sporadically carries out raids and detains suspected ISIL members inside its borders.
ISIL has carried out numerous assaults throughout Turkey, together with on a nightclub in Istanbul on January 1, 2017, by which 39 individuals have been killed, and a bombing within the metropolis’s historic coronary heart that killed 12 in 2016.