Washington: A top specialist in chemical weapons for Daesh who is in US custody in northern Iraq has given military interrogators detailed information that resulted in two allied air strikes in the last week against the group’s illicit weapons sites, Defence Department officials said on Wednesday.
The prisoner, an Iraqi identified by officials as Sulaiman Daoud Al Afari, was captured a month ago by commandos with an elite US Special Operations force. He was described by three officials as a “significant operative” in Daesh’s increasingly active chemical weapons programme. Another official said he once worked for Saddam Hussein’s Military Industrialisation Authority.
Daesh’s use of chemical weapons in Iraq and Syria has been known, but Al Afari’s capture has provided the United States with the opportunity to learn detailed information about the group’s secretive programme, including where chemical agents were being stored and produced.
Under interrogation, Al Afari told his captors how the group had weaponised sulphur mustard and loaded it into artillery shells, the officials said. Based on information from Al Afari, the US-led air campaign conducted one strike against a weapons production plant in Mosul, Iraq, and another against a “tactical unit” near Mosul that was believed to be related to the programme, the officials said.
Pentagon officials refused to publicly acknowledge the capture and interrogation of Al Afari, saying that they did not want to reveal details of what the US Special Operations team is doing in Iraq. But, “We know they have used chemical weapons in both Iraq and Syria,” a Pentagon spokesman, Capt. Jeff Davis, said on Wednesday, referring to Daesh. “This is a group that does not observe international norms.”
Davis said “in large doses” the sulphur mustard agent “can certainly kill,” citing a case last year of a Syrian baby who died after a chemical attack unleashed by Daesh on her home in northern Syria.
Dozens of people in the northern Iraqi town of Taza suffered from respiratory and skin irritation after a mortar and rocket barrage there by Daesh, in what local officials said on Wednesday was a chemical attack.
“Forty cases have been transferred to Kirkuk General Hospital, with four critical cases among them,” said Mohammad Al Mussawi, the head of the Popular Mobilisation Forces in the Kirkuk area, including Taza.
Daesh has kept up heavy bombardment of the area around Taza for at least three months. But a local security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the press, said this was the first time a chemical attack on the village was suspected, given the number of people who were ill immediately after the bombardment. He said he believed the attack used chlorine gas, though there was no one to independently confirm that.
The US has long suspected Daesh of using sulphur mustard, a chemical warfare agent, and last year officials said that they confirmed the presence of the mustard gas on fragments of ordnance used in Daesh attacks in Syria and Iraq. Laboratory tests, which were also performed on scraps of clothing from victims, showed the presence of a partially degraded form of distilled sulphur mustard, an internationally banned substance that burns a victim’s skin, breathing passages and eyes.
Chemical warfare agents, broadly condemned and banned by most nations under international convention, are indiscriminate. They are also difficult to defend against without specialised equipment, which many of Daesh’s foes in Iraq and Syria lack. The agents are worrisome as potential terrorist weapons, even though chlorine and blister agents are typically less lethal than bullets, shrapnel or explosives.
It was unclear how Daesh obtained sulphur mustard, a banned substance with a narrow chemical warfare application. Both the former government in Iraq of Saddam Hussein and the current government in Syria at one point possessed chemical warfare programmes.
Al Afari was captured last month by a new Special Operations force made up primarily of Delta Force commandos shortly after they arrived in Iraq. They are the first major US combat force on the ground there since the United States pulled out of the country at the end of 2011.
Two weeks after his capture military officials notified the International Committee of the Red Cross, which monitors the treatment of prisoners, that they were holding a Daesh fighter. The Red Cross acknowledged in a statement on Tuesday that it had visited Al Afari but gave no other information.
The military’s assertion that Al Afari was part of Saddam Hussein’s Baathist programme in the 1980s is not ironclad, based on details released so far. Al Afari is believed to be about 50 years, which would mean he was in his teens or early 20s at the time.
Pentagon officials insist that the US has no plans to hold Al Afari or any other prisoners for any length of time, and say that they will be handed over to Iraqi and Kurdish authorities after they have been interviewed. The officials say they do not intend to establish a long-term US facility to hold Daesh prisoners, and Obama administration officials have ruled out sending any to the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Change of tactics
Until recently, the US has largely targeted Daesh fighters with air strikes. But the 200-member Special Operations team has been assigned to both kill and capture Daesh operatives, the latter for use in gathering intelligence. Military officials said the team had set up safe houses and worked with Iraqi and Kurdish forces to establish informant networks and conduct raids on Daesh leaders and other important militants.
Senior Defence Department officials say the model for handling Al Afari was a Delta Force raid last May, when two dozen US commandos from Iraq entered eastern Syria aboard Black Hawk helicopters and V-22 Ospreys and killed Abu Sayyaf, described by US officials as Daesh’s emir for oil and gas. Abu Sayyaf’s wife, Umm Sayyaf, was captured and taken to a screening facility in northern Iraq, where she was questioned and detained. US forces seized laptop computers, cellphones and other materials from the site.
After being held for three months by the US authorities and providing them information, officials said, Umm Sayyaf was transferred in August to Kurdish custody.
Last month, the Justice Department filed an arrest warrant charging her with conspiring to provide material support to Daesh in an offence that officials said resulted in the death of Kayla Mueller, the American aid worker who was killed in Syria in February 2014.
