ISIS ‘Deir ez-Zor emir’ killed by Russian airstrike in Syria was linked to 2015 Paris attacks
A high-profile Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) commander Abu-Muhammad al-Shimali was killed during an airstrike on a terrorist bunker, the Russian Ministry of Defense says. The terrorist is believed to be linked to the 2015 Paris attacks.
The self-proclaimed ‘emir of Deir ez-Zor’ was killed alongside 40 other fighters, including high-ranking militants during an airstrike on a terrorist command bunker in the vicinity of the city of Deir ez-Zor, the ministry said on Friday.
“According to confirmed information, there were four influential field commanders, including ‘emir of Deir ez-Zor’ Abu-Muhammad al-Shimali, responsible for financing and smuggling new recruits to ISIS training camps,” the ministry said.
The “responsibilities” of the recently killed IS commander, according to the ministry, included transferring “IS terrorists through territories of Turkey, European, North Africa, Persian Gulf states and Australia.”
Apart from smuggling the recruits into Syria, al-Shimali was named by “several European intelligence agencies” as one of the organizers of the fatal November 2015 Paris attacks, the ministry added.
Media reports have previously indicated that French investigators established that at least three of the attackers arrived to France via refugee roots, with at least one of them obtaining a fake passport from his IS superiors.
Al-Shimali (also known as Tirad Al-Jarba) was an Iraqi-born Saudi Arabia citizen who defected from Al-Qaeda to IS in 2015.
The same year, the US State Department offered a bounty of up to $5 million for information leading to al-Shimali’s capture, describing him as “a key leader in ISIL’s Immigration and Logistics Committee” overseeing “smuggling activities, financial transfers, and the movement of supplies into Syria and Iraq from Europe, North Africa, and the Arabian Peninsula.”
