- Abu Sayyaf was killed in a May, 2015 raid by US Special Forces in Syria
- Documents seized in the raid gave more intelligence than 'any Special Forces operation in history,' a State Department official has said
- Recent review of documents revealed how Abu Sayyaf ran ISIS oil fields
- He was known as fearsome boss who oversaw cash-only fuel trade
- In oil field salary negotiations, slave ownership was taken into account
- Picture shows Abu Sayyaf counting huge stacks of cash from oil sales
- Even after US destroyed 30% of ISIS oil infrastructure, daily sales still amount $1 million, documents reveal
Documents
seized in the raid that killed a top ISIS oil executive last year have
revealed details on how the terror group ran its $1million-a-day oil
operation.
Paperwork reviewed by the Wall Street Journal shows
ISIS oil man Abu Sayyaf had a job not unlike other oil executives -
except he was also faced with issues like factoring slave ownership into
salary negotiations, and repairing oil wells damaged in U.S.
airstrikes.
A U.S. State Department official has said that
more information was obtained from the documents seized in the raid
against Abu Sayyaf than from 'any Special Forces operation in history.'
Scroll down for video
An undated picture seized in the raid
against Abu Sayyaf's Syrian compound in May 2015 shows the ISIS oil
executive counting large stacks of cash. Documents reveal ISIS's oil
operation is largely cash-based
Left, a
file photo shows Syrian petroleum being drilled from wells in
Kurdish-controlled Rimelan district. Right, ISIS fighters march in
Raqqa, the terror group's main stronghold in Syria
Spreadsheets
retrieved in the raid showed ISIS's total natural resource revenues in
the six months that ended in February 2015 amounted to $289.5 million -
and Abu Sayyaf's operation in the Deir Ezzour and al-Hasakah provinces
in north-eastern Syria contributed to 72 percent of those revenues, the
Journal reported.
Abu
Sayyaf, a Tunisian who had his headquarters in the al-Omar field in
Deir Ezzour, was known as a fearsome boss, who would threaten to
relocate workers to oil fields in Iraq, where bosses were thought to be
even worse, said Ibrahim, a 36-year old former oil worker interviewed by
the Journal.
But other means of intimidation were much more sinister, Ibrahim said:
'You go to work and you find someone beheaded.'
Abu Sayyaf was killed on May 16, 2015 in a nighttime raid against his compund in north-east Syria
Abu Sayyaf,
who was given custody in September 2014 of the American aid worker Kayla
Mueller after she suffered as ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's sex
slave, was killed on May 16, 2015 in the nighttime raid against his
compound in Deir Ezzour.
Under
the direction of ISIS, Abu Sayyaf set up a system where private buyers
would line up with trucks at oil fields, pay in cash for crude oil, and
transport it in their own trucks, according to the Journal.
As the Daily Beast
reported in December, the truckers would then sell the crude oil at a
profit to local, makeshift refineries. There, fuel was produced to be
sold at roadside pumping stations or in bulk to other smugglers, who go
on to sell it in more populated areas.
U.S. aid worker Kayla Mueller was briefly held by Abu Sayyaf prior to her death in February 2015
In
the end, the 'greater amount' of ISIS-produced oil was purchased by
Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's regime, according to the U.S.
Treasury Department.
'[Assad's
regime and ISIS] are trying to slaughter each other and they are still
engaged in millions and millions of dollars of trade,' said Adam
Szubin, acting under secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence
with the Treasury Department, Reuters reported in December.
Some of the ISIS-produced oil also ended up in Turkey, the Treasury Department claimed.
The
large profits ISIS made from oil prompted the U.S. to heavily target
the group's oil infrastructure in its air raids. The campaign
successfully dented ISIS's oil profits, making it less profitable today
than taxation, the Journal reported.
However,
even after U.S. air strikes destroyed 30 percent of ISIS's oil
infrastructure, the terror group still makes about $1 million every day
from selling oil, and the corporate structures set up under Abu Sayyaf
remain intact, according to the Journal.
The
terror group maintains its oil operation in part by offering handsome
salaries to skilled oil workers: more than three times an average Syrian
salary - $50 per month - for an accountant, and about eight times an
average salary for a drilling technician.
It also factors in how many slaves and dependents a worker has when deciding salaries, the Journal reported.
According
to the Journal, some of Abu Sayyaf's duties were taken over in March by
the French jihadist Abu Mohammad al-Fransi, who reports to his
predecessor's boss, Haji Hamid.
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