Iraqi intelligence helped foil Islamic State plots in France and Spain, military says

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s intelligence services provided information that helped prevent Islamic State attack plots in France and Spain, armed forces spokesperson Sabah al-Numan said Wednesday.

Speaking on Al-Iraqiya Al-Ikhbariyah TV, al-Numan said Iraq’s intelligence apparatus had supplied “important preemptive information” to several countries drawn from a large database on Islamic State members built up during and after liberation operations against the group.

“The Iraqi intelligence system supplied the intelligence services of several countries around the world with important preemptive information that thwarted plans by ISIS that it intended to carry out in France and Spain,” he said.

Al-Numan did not provide details on when the plots were disrupted or the nature of the intelligence shared with French and Spanish authorities.

The remarks came as Iraq marked the anniversaries of the fall of Mosul to Islamic State and the Speicher massacre. “Remembering the occupation of Mosul and the Speicher massacre is not meant to bring back the reality of pain,” al-Numan said, but to recall “the scale of the sacrifices made by Iraqis in order to liberate the land.”

The Speicher massacre took place in June 2014, when Islamic State militants executed approximately 1,700 unarmed Iraqi Air Force cadets at Camp Speicher near Tikrit after separating them from other prisoners. Most victims were Shia, and it remains one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Iraq’s history. Iraqi and Kurdish forces, backed by a U.S.-led coalition, drove the group from Iraqi territory in 2017; U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters seized its final Syrian stronghold in 2019.