Elwan, an Iraqi tailor went senior Daesh member

Aya Ezz

Daesh’s official weekly Arabic newsletter, Al-Nabaa, has celebrated in its latest issue on Friday international terrorist Kamel Mahmoud Elwan, calling him “Slayer of Americans and Russians.”

Elwan was killed in August 2019 during a military operation in Syria, although he was a senior member of Daesh, he was also head of another terrorist group called “Al-Tawhid Wal-Jehad” in Iraq’s Salahuddin province.

The newsletter deliberately mentioned Elwan because he was one of the participants in the massacre of Camp Speicher in 2014 when Daesh killed at least 1,566 Iraqi Air Force cadets in an attack on Camp Speicher in Tikrit.

Kamel Mahmoud Elwan, born in Samarra in Iraq, started his career as a tailor, before he went to Imam Ahmed Ibn Hanbal Mosque where Daesh recruiters changed his ideology about moderate Islam to an extremist vision. He took it upon himself to promote for killing Americans in Iraq.

During the first period of the last fifteen years, Elwan has become known among the terrorist circles in Iraq because of his ability to recruit a large number of young people to plot for bloody battles waged against US bases in Iraq. The US called him the second version of Osama bin Laden.

He was appointed by the terrorist organization as the “Emir of Samarra.”

The United States arrested Elwan and took him to a prison in Boca Raton in 2004 and 2005 where he served time and attempted to recruit a number of prisoners until he got out of prison following the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq after the execution of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in December 2006.

After he left prison, he returned to Iraq; but Iraqi forces arrested him and imprisoned him in a Tikrit Prison. After that, he was transferred to a prison in Baghdad and then another prison in Tikrit, until Daesh entered the city in 2014 and freed around 400 inmates, including Elwan.

He then communicated with Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, who made him an Emir over Salahuddin after initiating many attacks against the Iraqi army and international coalition until he went to Syria’s Raqqa, where he launched assaults against forces and the Druze in As-Suwayda Governorate.

He was killed last year in Damascus following an air raid by the international coalition to fight Daesh.