“This group bought weaponry and military equipment and were sending them to Baghdad,” KRSC wrote in a video confession of the group published on Facebook, adding that they were “planning to carry out more terrorist acts in the future.”
“They were a security group. They had set up checkpoints before in the city of Erbil and provided them with suicide bombers,” said the statement.
“One of the terrorist acts of this group is one of their suicide bombers, called Hidayat, blew himself up in Baghdad’s Sadr city” on July 19. That attack in Sadr City’s al-Wahilat market killed around 30 people.”
One of those arrested, Adam Sleman, known as Abu Islam from Erbil, said he got into “jihad” through ISIS-affiliated channels. “They trusted me; they knew my father who was in Ansar al-Islam before.”
He added that he sat down with a friend of his, Mohammed Shaaban known as Abu Hajar, who remains at large. “We sat down together to form a group inside Erbil that is affiliated with the Islamic State and works for the Islamic State.”
Multiple ISIS suspects have recently been arrested across the Kurdistan Region, including in Erbil. Last week, Kurdish counterterrorism forces conducted operations against ISIS in Erbil province, arresting two arms smugglers of the group.
The terror group seized control of swaths of land in Iraq in 2014. It was declared territorially defeated in 2017 but continues to carry out bombings, hit-and-run attacks, and abductions across several provinces.
ISIS has killed at least 20 members of Peshmerga forces and three civilians in areas disputed between the Kurdistan Region and Iraq, especially areas that border Erbil city.
