By HELENE COOPER, ERIC SCHMITT and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDTMARCH 1, 2016
The New York Times
WASHINGTON — An elite American Special Operations force has captured a significant Islamic State operative in Iraq and is expected to apprehend and interrogate a number of others in coming months, ushering in a new and potentially fraught phase in the fight against the extremist Sunni militant group.
American defense officials described the capture as a crucial development in battling the Islamic State but said it also raised questions about handling what is likely to be a growing group of detainees.
Although American commandos have captured a handful of Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria in discrete operations in recent years, the Pentagon is now faced with the prospect of detaining a larger group of captives and potentially reprising some of the darkest images of the war in Iraq, particularly the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.
The American military has largely fought the Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, from the sky, and large numbers of Islamic State fighters have been killed in Iraq and Syria by American airstrikes. The 200-member Special Operations team, made up of many Delta Force commandos, arrived in Iraq in recent weeks and is the first major American combat force on the ground there since the United States pulled out of the country at the end of 2011.
Defense officials said the team had set up safe houses and worked with Iraqi and Kurdish forces to establish informant networks and conduct raids on Islamic State leaders and other important militants.
Officials said the detainee, whom they declined to identify, was being interrogated by American officials at a temporary detention facility in the city of Erbil in northern Iraq. They said the plan was to eventually turn him over to Iraqi or Kurdish officials.
Several Defense Department officials declined to say how much information or cooperation they have received from the detainee. They said it could take weeks or months to finish questioning the operative.
As is protocol, Defense Department officials notified the International Committee of the Red Cross, which monitors the treatment of detainees, that they were holding an Islamic State fighter. A Red Cross spokesman, Trevor Keck, declined to comment on the matter, including on whether Red Cross personnel were observing the detainee’s treatment at the facility in Erbil.
Defense Department officials said that the United States had no plans to hold the detainee or others indefinitely, and that they would be handed over to Iraqi or Kurdish authorities after they have been interviewed. The officials said they did not intend to establish a long-term American facility to hold Islamic State detainees, and Obama administration officials ruled out sending any to the United States military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
One of President Obama’s major objectives before he leaves office is to close Guantánamo.
Captain Jeff A. Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, reiterated Tuesday that there were no plans to detain Islamic State captives long term. “Any detention would be short term and coordinated with Iraqi authorities,” he said.
Defense Department officials say the commandos, referred to at the Pentagon as a “specialized expeditionary targeting force,” will almost certainly increase the intelligence on the Islamic State available to the United States, including information about current operations extracted from laptops and cellphones.
Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, has said the commandos are to “go and scoop up paperwork and hard drives and other information that can be critical to our ongoing efforts as a central part of this strategy.”
Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter told reporters Monday that the commando force was going strong. “It’s a tool that we introduced as part of the accelerated operations to conduct raids of various kinds, seizing places and people, freeing hostages and prisoners of ISIL, and making it such that ISIL has to fear that anywhere, anytime, it may be struck,” Mr. Carter said.
Senior Defense Department officials said the model for handling detainees seized by the new commando unit was a Delta Force raid in May, when two dozen American commandos from Iraq entered Syria aboard Black Hawk helicopters and V-22 Ospreys and killed Abu Sayyaf, described by American officials as the Islamic State’s emir for oil and gas. Abu Sayyaf’s wife, Umm Sayyaf, was captured and taken to a screening facility in Iraq, where she was questioned and detained. American forces seized laptop computers, cellphones and other materials from the site.
Umm Sayyaf was kept for three months by the American authorities and provided them information, officials said. Last August, she was transferred to Kurdish custody, and last month, the Justice Department filed an arrest warrant charging her with conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State in an offense that officials said resulted in the death of Kayla Mueller, the American aid worker who was killed in Syria in February 2014.
Defense officials said only that the commando operation that led to the capture of the Islamic State militant was conducted in recent weeks in Iraq.
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