ISIS ‘white beard’ executioner captured by Iraqi forces escaped within minutes after paying a £5,500 bribe

An ISIS executioner known as ‘White Beard’ bribed his way to freedom minutes after being captured by Iraqi forces in Mosul, a local official has claimed.

Abu Omer, notorious for throwing gay people off rooftops and stoning other victims to death, was caught after being tracked down when locals tipped off police about his hideout.

But he was freed almost immediately after paying around £5,500 to the Iraqi officers who detained him in a Mosul police station, according to local official Zuheir Hazzen el-Jaburi.

‘I was in Mosul when a force from police intelligence arrested a man. After questioning they were told he was the mufti for the right bank of the [river in the] city – an ISIS member,’ el-Jaburi said.

‘We asked people who he was, and they proved he really was ISIS’s mufti. After he was arrested, he left a motorbike behind. An hour later we saw the motorbike was no longer there.

‘We inquired about it. They said he was released 10 minutes earlier after he paid $7,500,’ el-Jaburi added.

Famed for his long white beard, Omer was not only an ISIS chief but also one of the terrorists’ executioners, reportedly joining in the stoning of homosexuals to death for propaganda videos.

His arrest was confirmed on Friday by civilians who told the authorities where they believed the ISIS enforcer was hiding out.

The terror group has been practically flushed out of Mosul, though some operatives remain underground.

Fewer than 1,000 ISIS fighters are now said to be in Syria and Iraq combined, where they once held many major cities and vast expanses of territory.

The hideouts for the likes of Omer are wearing thin, according to AhlulBayt News Agency, and cities like Mosul are now facing the mammoth task of rebuilding.

In March 2015, chilling images emerged of three men accused of homosexuality and blasphemy being forced to their knees and publicly beheaded by a sword-wielding ISIS executioner.

Photographs of the barbaric murders showed the blindfolded men kneeling in the centre of what appears to be a roundabout with a crowd of people looking on as a masked executioner stands by with a long, rusty blade.

After an elderly man uses a microphone to read to the crowd from his notes, the executioner steps forward with the sword poised above the men’s heads in the unnamed city in northern Iraq.

That elderly man appears to be Omer.

While nearly three million Iraqis have returned to lands reclaimed from the militants, more than three million others cannot and remain languishing in camps.

In Mosul alone the UN estimates 40,000 homes need to be rebuilt or restored, with about 600,000 residents unable to return to a city which was once home to around two million people.

About $100 billion is required to rebuild Mosul and other areas of northern and western Iraq after three years of war devastated much of the area, the Iraqi government has said.

Source: Daily Mail