Dutch police arrest suspected Islamic State security chief

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Dutch authorities arrested a Syrian man on Tuesday who is suspected of having been a security chief for the Islamic State and Jabhat al-Nusra extremist groups during Syria’s grinding civil war, prosecutors said.

“It is suspected that from his position at IS he also contributed to the war crimes that the organization committed in Syria,” the National Public Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.

The 37-year-old man, whose name wasn’t released, was detained in the small village of Arkel, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) east of the port city of Rotterdam, prosecutors said in a statement.

The man is suspected of holding “a managerial position in the security service of IS” from 2015-2018, prosecutors said. For two years prior to that, he allegedly carried out the same work for Jabhat al-Nusra. Prosecutors say he held both functions “in and around the Yarmouk refugee camp” south of the Syrian capital, Damascus.

The suspect applied for asylum in the Netherlands in 2019 and later settled in Arkel, prosecutors said.

He will appear before the Magistrates in The Hague next month.