He is literally considered one of the biggest captures by the security forces in recent months as he was too heavy to be transferred to prison, that he had to be loaded onto the back of a truck.

Shifa al-Nima, an obese Islamic State (Isis) preacher said to be one of the terrorist group’s foremost leaders, was captured in Mosul, Iraq. The preacher who weighs 136kg (300 pounds) was captured from his hideout by the elite SWAT regiment of the Nineveh police command.

Nima is literally considered one of the biggest captures by the security forces in recent months as he was too heavy to be transferred to prison, that he had to be loaded onto the back of a truck.

“He is considered one of the foremost leaders of Isis and was responsible for issuing fatwas that led to the murder of scholars and clerics,” Iraqi police said. He was also reported to have given religious justification for enslavement, rape, torture and ethnic cleansing.

The preacher had issued a fatwa or religious edicts to bomb the Tomb of Jonah, a well-known shrine in Mosul, which was built on what is regarded as the burial site of the biblical prophet Jonah, known in the Koran as Yunus.

Photos online of the preacher wedged between a mounted machine gun at the back of the truck had gone viral.

Isis fighters swept into nearly a third of Iraq in the summer of 2014, stretching its self-proclaimed caliphate from the edges of Aleppo in Syria to the north of the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

Founded in 2013, ISIS remains a major global threat despite the killing of its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in a US raid last year.