Al-Qaeda Militants Raid Iraq's Abu Ghraib, Taji Prisons
Tenuous official accounts of what really transpired during the Abu Ghraib and Taji prison breaks leave many questions about the incident unanswered.
The attacks against the Abu Ghraib and Taji prisons on July 22 caused a shock at all levels. This requires recalculations not only to evaluate al-Qaeda’s capabilities, but also the Iraqi security efforts needed to combat this potential.
On the same day, websites close to al-Qaeda attributed the Abu Ghraib and Taji prison raids to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
This group was announced by the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, after he revealed that his group had merged with the Syrian Jabhat al-Nusra in April 2013.
The number of escaped inmates ranged between 500 and 1,000, according to Hakim al-Zamili, a member of the Security and Defense Committee in parliament. He said that most of them were detained senior members of al-Qaeda, and that the operation was planned and carried out by al-Qaeda in a professional and precise way — continuing to prove that it has potential that exceeds the estimations of the security services.
