Turkish intelligence and security forces captured a top Daesh terrorist in charge of the terrorist group’s finances in the Damascus region in an operation in Türkiye’s southern Mersin province on Tuesday.
Terrorist Hudhaifa al-Mouri, codenamed Ayyoub, who was responsible for coordinating funds sent to Daesh terrorist members, was nabbed in a joint operation coordinated by the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) and the police.
Over $28,000, 14,950 euros, 31,800 Turkish liras and digital materials were confiscated in the operation. Security forces also found out the mobile apps used by Daesh terrorists to transfer funds.
In his testimony, the terrorist talked about how he joined the terrorist group, their activities in Türkiye and Syria, the terrorists he has been in contact with, as well as money transfers.
Daesh remains the second biggest threat of terrorism for Türkiye which is embattled with security risks from multiple terrorist groups.
In 2013, Türkiye became one of the first countries to declare Daesh a terrorist group. The country has since been attacked by the terrorist group multiple times, with over 300 people killed and hundreds more injured in at least 10 suicide bombings, seven bomb attacks, and four armed attacks. In response, Türkiye launched anti-terror operations at home and abroad to prevent further attacks.
Terrorists from Daesh and other groups such as the PKK and its Syrian wing, the YPG, rely on a network of members and supporters in Türkiye. In response, Ankara has been intensifying its crackdown on the terrorists and their links at home, conducting pinpoint operations and freezing assets to eliminate the terrorist groups by their roots.
Since its formal defeat in Iraq in 2017 and significant loss of territory in Syria since 2015, Daesh fighters have been leading their operations underground besides losing their leaders to military operations. The group’s last three leaders, all Iraqis, were killed in Syria in recent years outside areas it once purported to rule.
The last Daesh leader, Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, the successor of Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Qurayshi who committed suicide during a U.S. raid earlier in 2022, was killed in mid-October last year by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in southern Syria, as confirmed by the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM).
The group’s founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was hunted down by the Americans in a raid in Idlib in October 2019. Remaining Daesh militants, whose numbers reach thousands, mostly hide in remote territory across the region but still possess the ability to carry out significant insurgent-style attacks.
The Sabah newspaper has recently reported that Türkiye obtained a valued database of the terrorist group, containing names and information about 9,952 "lone wolf" terrorists after a successful operation carried out in the past months by police in Istanbul. The existence of the database, which contains biographical information about lone wolf terrorists, from their skills to their residence and ID information was known to most intelligence agencies from the CIA and MI6 to Mossad. Intelligence agencies assigned 40 agents in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan to track down the database known to be in possession of Daesh members in those countries.