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The ISIS leader behind a brutal execution of a Jordanian pilot who was burned alive in a cage has finally been captured in Iraq.

Saddam al-Jamal was caught by Iraqi forces on May 9 along with three other commanders.

The Jordanian security services believe he masterminded the killing of downed pilot Muath al-Kasasbeh in 2015.

The 26-year-old was a Royal Jordanian Air Force pilot who was shot down in Raqqa, Syria, in December the year before.

In 2015, ISIS posted a video online allegedly showing the pilot being burned alive in a cage.

The footage shows a man wearing an orange boiler suit engulfed in flames after militants set him alight.

Field commanders Mohamed al-Qadeer, Issam Abdel Kader al-Zawba’i and Omar Shehab El-Karboul were also captured.

Pilot al-Kasaesbeh was held by militants after his fighter jet crashed in ISIS-controlled territory.

ISIS demanded the release of failed suicide bomber Sajida al-Rishawi in exchange for the pilot. Rishawi was imprisoned by Jordan for her part in a suicide bomb attack in 2005 that killed 60 people in the Jordanian city of Amman.

(Image: AFP)

Saddam al-Jamal was originally leader of the Allahu Akbar Brigade, a Free Syrian Army faction operating in Deir Ezzor, which had more than 800 fighters.

According to Al-Jazeera: "Jamal was not only the leader of a battalion but also a top FSA commander for the whole of Syria's eastern region."

On 16 December 2013, he appeared in a video entitled 'Revealing the biggest conspiracy targeting the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant' announcing he had joined ISIS.

The extent to which he had a choice in joining the extremist group has been disputed, with his defection sometimes cast as a 'surrender' to ISIS after two of his brothers were kidnapped, his brother's house was bombed and several of his fighters died.

During this time, al-Jamal narrowly escaped an assassination attempt after a man blew himself up at the headquarters. Jamal had set up at a branch of the state bank.

But in the video released by ISIS, he appears sincere in his defection and dedication to the group's cause.

From then on, through 2014, he was the ISIS leader for Abu Kamal - his home town.

In September 2015, it was reported al-Jamal had been appointed as a deputy to Abu Firas al-Iraqi, the ISIS governor of their Euphrates province straddling the Iraq-Syria border.