Kurdistan Region releases video of ISIS suspect confessing to plan for Erbil jailbreak

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Kurdistan Region Security Council (KRSC) on Monday said that it thwarted a plot by ISIS to attack a security facility in Erbil in an attempt to release prisoners belonging to the extremist group.

In a video released that day, a man named as Sabhan Abdu Salam al-Rifai, confesses to planning an attack on the General Directorate of Combating Terrorism in Erbil to break ISIS detainees free.

According to the confession, Rifai, born in 1970 in Nineveh province, says that he worked for the "explosives department" of ISIS starting in 2014 and traveled to Kirkuk after the liberation of Mosul from the group's control a few years later and stayed there until eventually moving to Erbil.

After residing in Erbil for a period of time, he said he called his brother who resides in Turkey’s Samsun province to reactivate him as an active member of the terrorist group. He was asked to record a clandestine video of the General Directorate of Combating Terrorism in Erbil "to carry out the operation to liberate prisoners by order of the Caliph."

After filming the requested footage, he explained, he was told to wait for supplies and additional ISIS members to arrive in Erbil to carry out the operation, but was arrested by Kurdistan Region security forces before the plan was carried out.

At least five people were recently killed in what appeared to be an ambush by suspected ISIS militants in Iraq's disputed territory of Khanaqin. 

Read More: Suspected ISIS fighters kidnap civilians, kill five in Iraq's disputed Khanaqin

Members of the terrorist group also kidnapped a number of civilians, according to witnesses and security sources.

Editing by John J. Catherine