One of Daesh leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s top aides, Ismael al-Ethawi, revealed to Iraqi intelligence how the mastermind of numerous terrorist attacks and executions managed to escape capture for many years in February 2018, Reuters reports, citing an Iraqi security official. The breakthrough came after Turkish authorities arrested al-Ethawi and handed him over to the Iraqis.

“Ethawi gave valuable information which helped the Iraqi multi-security agency team complete the missing pieces of the puzzle of Baghdadi’s movements and places he used to hide. Ethawi gave us details on five men, including himself, who were meeting with al-Baghdadi inside Syria and the different locations they used”, the unnamed source told the news agency.

The arrested militant explained that the world’s most sought-after terrorist met his commanders for talks in moving minibuses with vegetables to double back and elude the security services of many countries.

Ethawi, a member of al-Qaeda since 2006, was already arrested and jailed by the US in 2008, before rising to become one of al-Baghdadi’s top five aides, according to Iraqi officials. The terrorist leader tasked the man, who holds a PhD in Islamic Sciences, with selecting commanders and formulating religious instructions. After international forces countered Daesh, Ethawi, who was married to a Syrian woman, fled there.