Australia’s most-wanted jihadist Neil Prakash arrested

Neil Prakash, Australia’s most wanted Islamic State (IS) jihadist, has been arrested in Turkey, media reports said on Friday. This comes months after the US and Australia said the Fijian-Indian-origin man was killed in an American airstrike in Iraq this year.

The New York Times reported that Prakash, Australia’s most senior ISIS recruiter, was arrested in an unnamed Middle Eastern country.

The 25-year-old, who has gone by the name Abu Khaled al-Cambodi since joining ISIS in 2013, was thought to have been killed in an American airstrike in Iraq in July.

The senior Islamic State recruiter and terror plot instigator was arrested several weeks ago, after Australian authorities contacted Turkey saying that they had intelligence inputs that he was planning to enter the country, ABC News quoted a Turkish official as saying.

Prakash, who was of Fijian-Indian and Cambodian descent, has been a prominent member of the IS in Iraq, and has sought to recruit Australians to carry out attacks.

Quoting a senior American official, the Times said that US forces targeted Prakash earlier this year. Though he was wounded, he survived.

“In the last few weeks, however, a Middle Eastern government arrested Mr Prakash,” another senior American military official was quoted as saying.

Prakash handed himself to Turkish authorities several weeks ago, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation said. Australia’s justice minister, Michael Keenan, declined to comment on the new report on Prakash, but conceded that the government’s ability to confirm reports of deaths in Syria or Iraq was limited.

“As a matter of longstanding practice, the Australian government does not comment on matters of intelligence or law enforcement operations,” Keenan said. 

He added: “The government reported Prakash’s death in May on the basis of advice from the US government that he had been killed in an airstrike.”  

Prakash entered Syria in 2013 and has been the public face of a number of Islamic State’s propaganda videos. He grew up in Melbourne and converted to Islam in 2012.