Puppet Masters

Kremlin: If Baghdadi is actually dead, Trump has made big contribution to fighting terrorism - UPDATES: Remains 'buried at sea' (seriously!)

RT
Mon, 28 Oct 2019 15:48 UTC

While Russia still has no independent confirmation that US forces have killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Donald Trump is due credit if they did, Russian President Vladimir Putin's spokesman has said.

"The news itself can't be taken negatively by the Russian authorities," Dmitry Peskov said. "Indeed, our troops saw American planes and American drones in the area, which may have been on a mission there."

Earlier, the Russian Defense Ministry cast doubt on Washington's claim of al-Baghdadi's death, saying there's no credible data to prove his demise. If confirmed, however, Trump's efforts should be recognized, Peskov believes.

If indeed the information about al-Baghdadi's elimination is confirmed, then we can talk about the US president's significant contribution to the fight against international terrorism.

Moscow's skepticism is not unfounded, seeing as how rumors of al-Baghdadi's grave injury or death have surfaced repeatedly for the past four years, only to be later dispelled. Trump, however, has teased that some footage of his ultimate takedown at the hands of US troops could be released at some point.

Comment: There's little doubt at this point that something took place. Locals saw the explosions and journalists have visited the site of operation, showing rubble of the destroyed building and bodies.

Whether or not Baghdadi was actually killed there is what is doubtful. All we have is the say-so of the military who were apparently able to do an on-the-spot DNA test on the shredded body parts using DNA they already had on file. Russian media are skeptical too:

As Abdel Bari Atwan put it:

I have followed al-Qaida and ISIS closely as a journalist for a long time, and one thing they always do is issue official statements confirming the death of their commanders — if only to fulfil their religious obligation to inform the families, facilitate inheritance procedures and permit their wives to remarry if they choose. But unlike Bush Jr.'s administration, Obama's and Trump's never showed us pictures of their trophies. Their burial places are unknown. This suggests that they have something to hide, and we may not learn the truth about it for decades.

On the off chance that the U.S. military releases footage, a clear image of what appears to be Baghdadi fleeing and whimpering, as Trump put it, would at least go some way to confirming the story so far. Trump is apparently considering releasing some footage, but we're not holding our breath that it will contain anything definitive:

"The question was, 'am I considering releasing video footage of the raid,' and we may take certain parts of it and release it. Yes", Trump said while boarding Air Force One on his way to Chicago.

To compound the absurdity, however, two US defense officials have said Baghdadi's body was buried at sea (!), just like Osama. And no, it's not a joke.

Two Iraqi security officials told Reuters that Ismael al-Ethawi, a close aide to Baghdadi, provided important information after he was arrested by the Turks and handed over to the Iraqis, apparently in February 2018:

"Ethawi gave valuable information which helped the Iraqi multi-security agencies team complete the missing pieces of the puzzle of Baghdadi's movements and places he used to hide," one of the Iraqi security officials said. "Ethawi gave us details on five men, including him, who were meeting Baghdadi inside Syria and the different locations they used," he told Reuters.
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Ethawi, who holds a PHD in Islamic Sciences, was considered by Iraqi intelligence officials to be one of the leader's top five aides. He joined al Qaeda in 2006 and was arrested by U.S. forces in 2008 and jailed for four years, according to the Iraqi security officials.

Baghdadi later tasked Ethawi with key roles such as delivering religious instructions and the selection of Islamic State commanders. After the group largely collapsed in 2017, Ethawi fled to Syria with his Syrian wife.

Another turning point came earlier this year during a joint operation in which U.S., Turkish and Iraqi intelligence agents captured senior Islamic State leaders, including four Iraqis and one Syrian, the Iraqi security officials said.

"They gave us all the locations where they were meeting with Baghdadi inside Syria and we decided to coordinate with the CIA to deploy more sources inside these areas," said one of the Iraqi officials, who has close ties to multiple security agencies.

"In mid-2019 we managed to locate Idlib as the place where Baghdadi was moving from village to village with his family and three close aides," the official said.

Informants in Syria then spotted an Iraqi man wearing a checkered headdress in an Idlib marketplace and recognized him from a photograph, the official said. It was Ethawi, and they followed him to the home where Baghdadi was staying.

"We passed the details to the CIA and they used a satellite and drones to watch the location for the past five months," the official said.

Two days ago, Baghdadi left the location with his family for the first time, traveling by minibus to a nearby village.

"There it was his last moment to live," the official said.

The timeline they provide is incoherent. Ethawi was arrested by U.S. forces in 2008 until 2012. At some point he joins ISIS, then flees to Syria in 2017. Then, he's arrested in February 2018 and handed over to the Iraqis, only to be "spotted" in Idlib in "mid-2019"? The Reuters article continues:

Baghdadi was also on the run from local enemies in Syria. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the group formerly known as the Nusra Front and which dominates Idlib, had been mounting its own search for Baghdadi after receiving information he was in the area, according to a commander in an Idlib jihadist group.
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According to the Idlib commander, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham recently captured another aide to Baghdadi known as Abu Suleiman al-Khalidi, one of three men seen sitting alongside Baghdadi in his last video message. The capture of Khalidi was "the key" in the search for Baghdadi, the commander said.

His comments raised the possibility that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which locals say is believed to have contacts with Turkish forces in northwest Syria, may have passed on what it learned to other intelligence agencies.

Baghdadi may have concluded that hiding in Idlib was his best hope after Islamic State was all but wiped out in Iraq and Syria. He could have blended in, while lax security and checkpoints operated by armed groups that rarely search vehicles increased his chances of survival, the commander said.

He said Baghdadi was believed to have been in Idlib for about six months, and that his main reason for being there was to try to hide. But he said Baghdadi was still seen as a major threat because his presence would have attracted supporters in an area where Islamic State has sleeper cells.

Hayat Tahrir al-Sham fighters raided the town of Sarmin about two months ago after receiving information about Baghdadi being there, but he was not found, according to the commander.

CNN reports on another alleged source of information - this revelation also coming from the Iraq government:

One of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's closest collaborators, a relative through marriage, provided key information about the ISIS leader that helped lead to his capture, a senior Iraqi government official told CNN.

Mohammed Ali Sajet -- an ISIS member since 2015, who acted as a guide for Baghdadi -- was detained by Iraqi authorities about two months ago on the outskirts of the capital Baghdad.

A senior official with the Iraqi government told CNN that Sajet provided information about Baghdadi's possible location in Syria, as well as details about a courier that was working with the elusive leader.

"We followed the courier, a raid killed him and that is how we got his wife," said the senior government official. "He had documents that led to his wife."

The official said that the courier's wife led the Iraqis to another location, which had more documents pointing to Baghdadi's whereabouts.

"We give them (the Americans) a tip," said the official. "We used human intelligence and we get closer."

While the Iraqi source said the intelligence was central to the manhunt, multiple officials and countries have claimed to have provided information that led to Baghdadi's capture. It was likely a combination of intelligence gathering between several parties that resulted in Baghdadi's demise.
In an exclusive interview with Saudi-owned Al Arabiya TV station, Sajet said Baghdadi's "hiding tactics were excellent."

"We didn't expect this to happen. Even he didn't expect to be killed due to his security measures," he said, speaking to Al Arabiya from detention in Iraq.

"I met him in an area close to the Syrian-Iraqi border. His security was good. They were tending and herding sheep. He was there, hiding underground and there was a tent above him."

"Their movement was hard due to the tight grip of security forces on the area I saw him in," he added.

"He was talking about deteriorating security status due to the security forces. He wanted to change his location and didn't know how to."

Fadhil Abu-Ragheef, an Iraqi security expert, told CNN that Sajet gave information to the Iraqis, who shared it with the US and ultimately led them to Baghdadi's compound in Syria's northwestern Idlib province.

Sajet told Al Arabiya that another ISIS member told him he had secured a location in Idlib for Baghdadi.

The Iraqis began to gather more information about Baghdadi six months ago, when they captured a group of six ISIS members west of Anbar, according to Abu-Ragheef. Those six individuals led investigators to Sajet.

Some in the group were also related to Sajet by marriage, and were able to paint a picture for the intelligence services about the terror leader's movements. They would move in the desert and were responsible for bringing Baghdadi food, beverages and women. Sajet described the conditions at one of al-Baghdadi's hideouts to Al Arabiya.

"He was in an 8-meter-long underground tunnel with a width of 5 to 6 meters. It had a library, religious books, and the Quran and things of sort. It had lights and various things so the hiding situation was good," he said.

Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin told reporters there was "intense" military coordination with the US before the Baghdadi operation:

"Our military and intelligence units were in contact with their American counterparts on this issue and they coordinated. Especially...the night when the operation was conducted, we can say there was intense diplomacy between our military authorities. A terrorist organisation nesting in Syria, near our border, or any other region, is not something we can accept", he stated.

And according to the SDF, a second raid in Idlib yesterday resulted in the killing of an ISIS spokesman:

SDF Commander in Chief Mazloum Abdi said on Twitter that IS spokesman Abu Hassan al-Muhajir was "targeted" in a village near the town of Jarablus, near the border with Turkey, in a coordinated operation between SDF intelligence and the U.S. Army.

In a later post on Twitter, SDF spokesman Mustefa Bali said Muhajir had been killed.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based monitoring group, confirmed Muhajir's death, saying he was among five IS members who were killed in a U.S.-led operation backed by the SDF.

"The two U.S.-led operations have effectively disabled top [IS] leadership who were hiding" in northwestern Syria, Bali said, adding that "more still remain hiding in the same area."

For yesterday's coverage, see: