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May 2, local time, Turkish intelligence and police jointly arrested an Afghan suspect code-named “Basim” as Baghdadi’s right-hand man in Istanbul, according to turkish media reports.
In 2019, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the top leader of the extremist group Islamic State, committed suicide during a U.S. military operation against him in northwest Syria.
Turkey is known to regularly arrest people linked to the extremist group Islamic State, especially after the group’s attack in Istanbul in the early hours of New Year’s Day 2017 that killed 39 people. In the first three months of 2021, Turkish security forces have arrested 850 suspects suspected of links to extremist groups.
