WASHINGTON,— The U.S. handed over to Iraqi Kurds a woman prisoner who officials said provided valuable intelligence about the inner workings of Islamic State. The woman, known as Umm Sayyaf, was detained following a dramatic raid by U.S. commandos in eastern Syria in May, in which her husband—Islamic State operative Abu Sayyaf—was killed.She allegedly played a role in the capture of American citizen Kayla Mueller , an aid worker who later died in captivity in Syria.The U.S. said the prisoner had been held at a U.S. detention facility in Erbil, the capital of the semiautonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region, and was transferred to Kurdish custody.The U.S. had held her for nearly three months.
Her transfer at night in Iraq came after months of questioning, which U.S. officials say provided valuable insights into Islamic State’s financial operations and leaders.After interrogators collected the information from her, officials debated whether she should be brought to the U.S. to face criminal charges.Iraqi officials resisted that approach, citing an Iraqi constitutional ban on surrendering citizens to foreign authorities.The U.S. decided that turning her over to Kurdish authorities for prosecution was the most viable alternative.
“We work closely with the Kurdistan Regional Government authorities, and for various reasons, including the location of potential witnesses, it made sense to transfer her to the custody of Iraqi authorities in Erbil,” a senior administration official said.The official said the transfer was done in full coordination with the Iraqi government.“We have a firm belief that she will be held to account for her crimes, though we cannot guarantee any particular result,” the official said.Administration officials said they were in contact with Ms. Mueller’s family before transferring Umm Sayyaf.The U.S. raid by Delta Force commandos in Syria in May was the first of its kind for American forces there.Mr. Sayyaf was killed during a firefight that day and the U.S. military captured Umm Sayyaf and a woman who belonged to the Yazidi minority, thought to have been held by the couple as a slave.The commandos seized electronic documents, computer hard drives and other hardware, cellphones and material from the site that amounted to as much as seven terabytes of data.
U.S. officials have said Umm Sayyaf provided telephone numbers of people closely associated with Islamic State, as well as other information on how the militant group fills its deep coffers.She was cooperative during her detention, officials said. U.S. officials wouldn’t comment publicly on what intelligence was gleaned from her interrogation. Some officials, however, said she acknowledged early on she played a role in the capture of Ms. Mueller, an American human-rights advocate picked up by Islamic State in Syria in August 2013 and killed in February. The raid in May was planned for months, a reflection of the care the U.S. military took in executing it and the value put on Mr. Sayyaf. U.S. officials also have been using the data to track Islamic State’s elusive leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who remains at large.