The new head of the Islamic State arrested in Istanbul

The new head of the Islamic State (IS), identified as Abu al Hasan al Qurashi, would have been captured in Istanbul, according to the Turkish news portal OdaTV.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
26 May 2022 Thursday 05:47
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The new head of the Islamic State arrested in Istanbul

The new head of the Islamic State (IS), identified as Abu al Hasan al Qurashi, would have been captured in Istanbul, according to the Turkish news portal OdaTV. Said media assures that the anti-terrorist operation was carried out last week with the utmost secrecy, which allowed the jihadist leader to be arrested without firing a single bullet.

Always according to this channel, the security forces would have collected very relevant information about IS's modus operandi during the interrogations. The president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, should give more details in the coming days.

According to the veteran OdaTV crime reporter, Al Qurashi's home was under surveillance for days. It has not been made public in which neighborhood of Istanbul he was hiding, although there are already several neighborhoods in which the abundant Arabic-speaking population would allow him to go unnoticed.

Abu al Hasan al Qurashi may have been the most ephemeral of the leaders of the declining Islamic State, since he was appointed just over three months ago, after the United States Army claimed to have eliminated his predecessor, the no less enigmatic, Abu Ibrahim al Hashimi al Quraishi, in a special operation in the Syrian province of Idlib, very close to the Turkish border.

It should be remembered that Idlib is home to the last focus of Islamist resistance in Syria, with an abundant presence of elements affiliated with Al Qaeda. All this, a short distance from several barracks of the Turkish occupation forces.

In 2019, a US special forces commando killed Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the former head of IS, an Iraqi national, who in 2014 had proclaimed himself the caliph of Islam. According to some sources, the terrorist recently arrested in Istanbul could be his brother.