US Central Command said Monday that its forces, along with the Kurdish-led SDF, captured an ISIS “facilitator” in Syria who was responsible for breaking other ISIS members out of prison.
“During the early morning hours of September 1, CENTCOM forces and SDF captured Khaled Ahmed al-Dandal, an ISIS facilitator assessed to be aiding efforts of detained ISIS fighters to include recently escaped fighters,” CENTCOM said in a press release.
The command said that five ISIS members broke out of prison last week. The SDF captured two of them and is on the search for the other three.
“Over 9,000 ISIS detainees remain in over 20 SDF detention facilities in Syria, a literal and figurative ‘ISIS Army’ in detention. If a large number of these ISIS fighters escaped, it would pose an extreme danger to the region and beyond,” said Gen. Erik Kurilla, head of CENTCOM.
On Monday, the SDF released 50 people accused of being members of ISIS as part of an amnesty deal.
The SDF also holds tens of thousands of women and children in the US-funded detention facilities that were set up after the defeat of ISIS in eastern Syria. In April, Amnesty International released a report that accused the SDF of being responsible for torture and “mass death” due to inhumane conditions at the prisons.
The report said that the US is “involved in most aspects of the detention system” and that the Pentagon has provided “hundreds of millions of dollars to the SDF and affiliated security forces.”
The US uses ISIS as its justification to stay in Syria, but the occupation is more about keeping the areas it controls out of the hands of the Syrian government and its allies, which includes Iran and Russia. The US also maintains crippling economic sanctions on Syria, which are designed to prevent the country’s reconstruction and have a devastating impact on civilians.
