by WorldTribune Staff, January 28, 2020

A captured Islamic State (ISIS) mufti has confessed to issuing a series of rape-and-pillage “fatwas” that gave the group’s jihadists license to carry out gruesome atrocities while the terrorists controlled Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, from 2014 to 2017.

Iraqi security forces released photos of ISIS honcho Shifa al-Nima on Jan. 16 in his Baghdad hiding place. Due to his enormous girth, al-Nima had to be hoisted from his hideout onto a flatbed truck.

“I issued fatwas permitting the expulsion of Christians from Mosul, enslavement, selling Yazidi women,” al-Nima confessed.

The Supreme Judicial Council of Iraq published a detailed report on al-Nima’s interviews. The report was translated for the press by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

Al-Nima told his captors: “I issued the fatwas that punish the citizens who don’t go to mosques, a flogging fatwa for those who smoke cigarettes, and a fatwa requiring officials in the [Iraqi] security forces to obtain a repentant card and surrender their weapons. I also issued the fatwa requiring shop owners to pay [taxes] and the fatwa to expel Christians from Mosul, and I permitted killing of Shi’ites and issued other fatwas in regard to allowing ISIS fighters to enslave Yazidi women and sell them and killing the Yazidi men.

“I also issued fatwas to confiscate houses of displaced people and permitted ISIS fighters to blow up mosques in Mosul which had graves of prophets and righteous people inside them, such as permitting the destruction of Mosque of Prophet Yunus in August 2014.”

Al-Nima, a Muslim “mufti” or religious scholar, “also provided details on how radical Sunnis obtain cash to finance terrorism. In his case, as a networking young terrorist, he had a financial benefactor in Saudi Arabia and two terrorist funders who resided in London,” Rowan Scarborough noted in a Jan. 26 report for The Washington Times.

Al-Nima said his funding stream came from a mujahideen residing in London and a Saudi national. He networked with Sunni terrorists, including a second Londoner.

“We discussed religious topics, and I explained to him the situation in Mosul and the details about the Iraqi forces and their affiliation with the Americans,” al-Nima said. “We talked about the role of jihadi factions, and he gave me $6,000 and asked that I spend it on armed groups. When I returned to Mosul, I met with members of armed groups and I distributed the money between them.”

As part of the ongoing Operation Inherent Resolve operation, the U.S. is maintaining about 5,000 ground troops and air power in Iraq to prevent an ISIS resurgence.

An August assessment from the U.S. Defense Department inspector general stated that ISIS “solidified insurgent capabilities in Iraq” during the summer.

“ISIS carried out assassinations, suicide attacks, abductions, and arson of crops in both Iraq and Syria,” the inspector general said. “In addition, ISIS established ‘resurgent cells’ in Syria and sought to expand its command and control nodes in Iraq.”

Robert L. Maginnis, a retired Army lieutenant colonel and national security author, told the Washington Times that “ISIS warriors are still spread across the region in some of the most unlikely locations. They are like rats that must be smoked out but wait patiently for the anticipated re-emergence of a new caliph.”

Maginnis added: “It’s not surprising that an ISIS-related Mufti issued fatwas that gave permission for Islamists to commit atrocities against the non-Sunni population of Iraq and Syria. That was license for those Islamists to slash, burn, kill, rape and steal. These so-called warriors for the caliph were no better than criminal thugs hiding behind the air of legitimacy granted by their caliph al-Baghdadi and his legion of supportive muftis.”

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