The US on Tuesday offered a $10 million reward for information on the leader of Harakat Hezbollah Al Nujaba, an Iran-backed militia operating in Iraq.
Akram Al Kaabi, a cleric, was sanctioned by the US Treasury in 2008 for threatening the peace and stability of Iraq. The group was hit with US sanctions in 2019.
“Han members have attacked US diplomatic facilities in Iraq as well as US military bases in Iraq and Syria, killing a US contractor and wounding a US servicemember,” the State Department's Rewards for Justice programme said.
Mr Al Kaabi rose through the ranks of various Shiite armed groups after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. He has since led calls for attacks on US forces, proclaimed Shiite groups should “liberate Iraq” from the Americans and supported Hamas in the war in Gaza.
In 2013, he formed the Ammar Ben Yassir Brigade to join the fight in Syria alongside the now deposed president Bashar Al Assad’s army. That then became the Al Nujaba Movement.
Late last year, Mr Al Kaabi threatened the US special envoy to Iraq at the time, Baghdad-born Mark Savaya, calling him a “traitor” to the country of his birth, and that the “Islamic Resistance” would “put a stone in his mouth and return him to his masters who enslaved him”.
This is at least the fourth bounty the US has announced for information on leaders of Iran-backed Iraqi militias in the past few months. Since the joint US-Israel strikes on Iran at the end of February, Iraqi militias have stepped up attacks on US interests in the region.
