The US just captured a significant ISIS operative, and it is now facing a big dilemma
Iraqi
security forces traveling to Mosul to fight against militants of the
Islamic State on February 21. An American Special Ops unit recently
captured a significant ISIS fighter in Iraq, but its plans for the
operative after his imminent interrogation don't appear very solid. The
militant - the first captured by the Army's elite Delta Force since its
deployment in December - is being interrogated by the US at a temporary
detention center near Erbil in northern Iraq, The New York Times
reported.
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The US just captured a significant ISIS operative, and it is now facing a big dilemma
Allan Smith,Business Insider 5 hours agoAn American Special Ops unit recently captured a significant ISIS fighter in Iraq, but its plans for the operative after his imminent interrogation don't appear very solid.
The militant — the first captured by the Army's elite Delta Force since its deployment in December — is being interrogated by the US at a temporary detention center near Erbil in northern Iraq, The New York Times reported.
But US officials didn't seem clear
about what they planned to do with the detainee — and the presumed wave
of detainees to come, if all goes to plan — after his interrogation,
which could take weeks or months.
The Defense Department said there were
no plans to hold any detainees for an indefinite amount of time — there
is little appetite among administration officials for a new American
facility to hold Islamic State detainees, à la the disgraced Abu Ghraib prison that held suspected members of Al Qaeda in Iraq from 2004 to 2006.
No ISIS operatives will be sent to Guantanamo Bay, either, in light of Obama's recent proposal to Congress that the controversial military prison be closed for good.
The US might do what it did with Umm Sayyaf, the wife of ISIS' "oil emir" Abu Sayyaf. Umm Sayyaf was detained for three months by US officials after American commandos killed her husband in a May raid. She was then transferred to Iraqi Kurds in August.
The Kurds, however, haven't filed any charges against Umm Sayyaf for her alleged role in the death of American aid worker Kayla Muller, or for the abuse of Yazidi women by her husband she reportedly helped facilitate. The worry among administration officials now, The Daily Beast reported, is that if they hand over the newest ISIS detainee to the Kurds, they won't bring him to justice.
"We
discussed the idea of [Sayyaf's] surrender and extradition to the US
with senior-level [Iraqi] officials, but ultimately that option was not
available as Iraq has a constitutional prohibition on surrendering Iraqi
citizens to foreign authorities," the official said.
It's not clear whether the ISIS fighter captured earlier this
week is an Iraqi citizen. But if US officials remain steadfast in
transferring him over to the Iraqis, as they did with Sayyaf, it's
uncertain what will happen to him in their custody.
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