A multi-million dollar bounty has been placed on the head of a key Islamic State terrorist in charge of mobilizing foreign fighters in Syria.

The US State Department said Abu-Muhammad al-Shimali had been associated with the extremist
group now known as the Islamic State since 2005, when it was an Al Qaeda affiliate in Iraq.
It said he was now a leader of its immigration and logistics committee, responsible for moving foreign terrorist fighters into Syria and processing the group’s new recruits there.

The bounty note states:

‘Shimali and the Isis immigration and logistics committee coordinate smuggling activities, financial transfers, and the movement of supplies into Syria and Iraq from Europe, North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.

‘In 2014, Shimali facilitated the travel from Turkey to Syria of prospective Isis fighters from Australia, Europe and the Middle East, and managed Isis’s processing centre for new recruits in Azaz, Syria.’

Shimali, who has also been described as Isis’s gatekeeper, was placed on a US Treasury Department sanctions list in September last year, freezing his financial assets and banning him from travel.

Earlier this week Vladmir Putin offered a $50m (£33m) reward for information which leads to the arrest of those responsible for the bombing of Metrojet Flight which killed 224 people and which Russia confirmed was caused by an ‘act of terrorism’.