It was two years ago this month that Ahmed al-Zarkani, head of intelligence in Mosul, first warned the Iraqi government in Baghdad that the Islamist group Isis was planning something big.

But from that alert, in February 2014, to his final plea for the air force to bomb Isis fighters as they gathered on the eve of their attack, his warnings were repeatedly ignored – and so were those of other key political figures.

The published section of the official Iraqi parliamentary report into the fall of Mosul focused heavily on the many military failings that allowed Isis swiftly to overrun the city of two million people when it attacked five months later, first liberating scores of imprisoned Sunni jihadists and then on 10 June taking complete control. The terrified Iraqi army fled with hardly a fight.

But unpublished testimony from the inquiry, and accounts given the The Independent by key figures at the time, reveal another failing. The government, led by the then Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, brushed aside increasingly urgent calls for help in the run-up to the “surprise” Isis attack. The testimony also reveals the growing frustration of Mr Zarkani that his detailed warnings to Baghdad were being ignored.

It was from arrested Isis members that Mr Zarkani first discovered that an attack was being planned for June. On 25 February, according to his evidence to the commission of inquiry, he informed his bosses in Baghdad. Soon after that he discovered what he described as “something abnormal happening towards Mosul, with training camps set up,” according to the leaked testimony report.

By May, he had supplied Baghdad with a wealth of information about six Isis training camps outside the city, But although the Iraqi air force conducted surveillance missions and confirmed the camps’ locations, it did not respond to Mr Zarkani’s request to bomb them.

On 18 May, he received new information that Isis was preparing an attack on the right side of Mosul, and phoned the commander in charge of military operations in the city to alert him. A few days later he discovered that the attack would start on 6 June at 6am. Again warning Baghdad, he noted that Isis was planning to switch its efforts from Anbar province to Nineveh, whose capital is Mosul. He told them the name given by the jihadists to the coming operation: “Al-Eres”, or the wedding party. Vehicles had been obtained, weapons acquired and new locations established. “All their senior commanders will take part, as they have been planning for a long time,” he reported.

Scenes of destruction in Mosul soon after Isis seized power in June 2014 (Reuters)

More than a dozen times over the weeks and months he sent warnings, in documents and phone calls to military intelligence in Baghdad, to Mr Maliki’s office, to the Mosul provincial council and to military commanders in both his own city and in Baghdad. And yet, the Mosul commander in charge of military operations went on holiday on 3 June – three days before the predicted attack.

Mr Zarkani phoned him and begged him to return. “When I told him why, he seemed to be shocked,” he later said to the commission of inquiry, although only two days earlier he had informed him in person about the Isis plans.

On 5 June, intelligence established that Isis planned to enter Mosul the next morning from two different directions on either bank of the River Tigris, using between 700 and 1,000 fighters – among them nine foreign suicide bombers. The attackers, made up of various nationalities, would wear military uniforms, similar to those of the Iraqi army.

The intelligence chief sent a final document to his bosses and informed Mosul’s military commander that terrorists were now gathering in the village of Sheikh Younis, six miles from the city. “I gave the co-ordinates of the village, but nobody took any action,” he told the commission. “I told them the attack will be on 6 June at 5am... There would be four explosive cars on the right side and four on the left side [of the river], and nine suicide attacks... on the right side of the city.”

He added: “The attack happened on the day we said and from the places we mentioned. If they took only 10 per cent seriously, we would not have had the battle.”

So why was the information given to Baghdad ignored, instead of being used to prevent an attack? As well as being Prime Minister, Mr Maliki was in charge of two key departments, the ministries of defence and of internal affairs. The latter was responsible for domestic intelligence,

The parliamentary commission put most of the blame for the fall of Mosul on Mr Maliki. But it also apportioned part of it to Mosul’s governor at the time, Atheel al-Nujaifi, who has since been sacked.

“The committee mentioned six points against me,” Mr Nujaifi told The Independent in his office in the Kurdistan capital, Erbil, where he fled when his own city fell. “Only two of them directly relate to the fall of Mosul. They said that I did not inform the Prime Minister that Mosul would fall. But at the same time, Maliki’s chief of staff said in his testimony that I was the only man who phoned him, to say that Mosul was falling and I needed more weapons. Maliki had answered this was not the job of the governor.”

Mr Nujaifi, himself a Sunni, blames sectarian tensions between Iraq’s Shia and Sunni, the two main strands of Islam, for the near absence of communication between his office and the government in Baghdad. He says Mr Maliki even instructed his own people not to share information with him. Yet Mr Nujaifi says that he in fact already knew from his own sources what was being planned by Isis – known locally as Daesh – but that he, too, was unable to secure any help.

The reason, he says, was Mr Maliki’s apparent reluctance to give succour to Sunni politicians who might be linked to the Baath party that had ruled Iraq under Saddam Hussein. “Maliki thought I had ties with the Baath party and that if he gave me his support, Baath would be a major power in the city,” he said.

He believes that Mr Maliki and his Shia followers were so afraid of the Baath party that they preferred Isis. “They knew that if there was a Sunni political power centre in Mosul, nobody would help them fight it – but with Daesh, all the world would help. To them, any Sunni power acceptable to the international community was more dangerous than Daesh.”

It was clear that some disillusioned former Baathists were active in Isis, Mr Nujaifi says, but Mr Maliki thought they were not the major power. “For him, Baath politicians were far more dangerous.”

Based on his contacts with the Iraqi military command in Mosul and plans he heard of for bombing the city if it fell into Isis hands, Mr Nujaifi thinks that Mr Maliki meant to set a trap. “He wanted the right side of Mosul to fall in the hands of Daesh, and then to surround and bomb it, and all those who stayed inside it with Daesh.

“He did not think of lives lost. Maliki wanted Mosul to fall. It would give him a chance to reorganise politics. The people would need him more after that.”

Bashar Kiki, the Kurdish head of provincial council of Mosul and member of the largest Iraqi Kurdish party, the KDP, considers it possible that Mr Maliki thought the fall of Mosul could be politically advantageous, so he could then present himself as its saviour. But Mr Kiki prefers to think ignorance was to blame

“The military commands and the political leaders in Baghdad did not realise that the threat was real,” he said. “A lot of information was not taken seriously, because they were not professional enough.”

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki blamed the Kurds (AFP/Getty)

A month before Mosul’s fall, Mr Kiki, too, presented information about Isis activities to military commanders, but said: “They had no attention to spare for it, because they were busy with other things” – a reference to the army’s notoriety for extorting money from civilians, receiving bribes and getting payments for ghost soldiers who never showed up.

Finally reacting to all the reports he had been sent, Mr Maliki sent two generals, Abud Kambar and Ali Ghaidan, from Baghdad to Mosul, where Mr Kiki was eventually able to meet them. “They assured me that everything was under control, but in fact the opposite was true,” he said.

Mr Kiki points out that it was well known that extremist Muslim groups, some of them tied to al-Qaeda and later to Isis, had been active in Mosul for years, and controlled surrounding villages. Many Sunni residents of Mosul had been unhappy at changes within Iraq after Saddam’s fall in 2003, leading some to support the Sunni extremists.

Fuad Hussein, chief of staff to the Kurdish President, Masoud Barzani, said that Kurdish authorities also offered Baghdad information, warnings and even help – and passed the information to US officials as well.

“My president telephoned around eight months before the fall and spoke to both Ammar al-Hakim [leader of a prominent Shia party] and to the American ambassador in Iraq,” he said.

“A month before it fell, he phoned Maliki to say the situation in Mosul was dangerous. Maliki did not take it seriously. He said to my president: ‘You can care about Kurdistan; I will look after the rest.’”

Just days before the attack, President Barzani offered to send Kurdish peshmerga troops to help defend the city, as its governor, Mr Nujaifi, had implored, according to Mr Hussein. Again Mr Maliki refused. When, on the night that Mosul fell, Mr Hussein phoned one of Mr Maliki’s most trusted colleagues to repeat the offer, his call was never returned.

“Maliki thought he had all the power and his officers and soldiers were strong enough to defend the city,” he said. “He did not want our help for fear that we would consider Mosul as Kurdish.”

All those interviewed by The Independent regard Mr Maliki’s distrust of other groups as a major issue. He did not trust the intelligence chief of Mosul, even though he was working for Baghdad intelligence. The Iraqi Prime Minister ran “a one-man show,” said Mr Hussein, “He made all the decisions. And he trusted other reports that he received, better than he trusted ours.”

One reason may be that few believed Isis really wanted to capture Mosul. According to Mr Hussein, the impression was that the group merely wanted to liberate its comrades from the city’s Badoosh prison.

In pictures: The rise of Isis Show all 74 1 /74 In pictures: The rise of Isis In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Fighters of the Islamic State wave the group's flag from a damaged display of a government fighter jet following the battle for the Tabqa air base, in Raqqa, Syria AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Fighters from Islamic State group sit on their tank during a parade in Raqqa, Syria AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Fighters from the Islamic State group pray at the Tabqa air base after capturing it from the Syrian government in Raqqa, Syria AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Fighters from extremist Islamic State group parade in Raqqa, Syria AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis kidnapping A video uploaded to social networks shows men in underwear being marched barefoot along a desert road before being allegedly executed by Isis Getty Images In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis kidnapping Haruna Yukawa after his capture by Isis In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis kidnapping Khalinda Sharaf Ajour, a Yazidi, says two of her daughters were captured by Isis militants Washington Post In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Spokesperson for Isis Vice News via Youtube In pictures: The rise of Isis A pro-Isis leaflet A pro-Isis leaflet handed out on Oxford Street In London Ghaffar Hussain In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters Isis Jihadists burn their passports In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis controls Syrian Aid A man collecting aid administered by Isis in Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis controls Syrian Aid A woman collecting aid administered by Isis in Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis controls Syrian Aid Local civilians queue for aid administered by Isis. Since it declared a caliphate the group has increasingly been delivering services such as healthcare, and distributing aid and free fuel In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces detain men suspected of being militants of the Isis group in Diyala province In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Mourners carry the coffin of a Shi'ite volunteer from the brigades of peace, who joined the Iraqi army and was killed during clashes with militants of the Isis group in Samarra, during his funeral in Najaf In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An Iraqi Shiite Turkmen family fleeing the violence in the Iraqi city of Tal Afar, west of Mosul, arrives at a refugee camp on the outskirts of Arbil, in Iraq's Kurdistan region In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi A photograph made from a video by the jihadist affiliated group Furqan Media via their twitter account allegedly showing Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi delivering a sermon during Friday prayers at a mosque in Mosul. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared an Islamist caliphate in the territory under the group's control in Iraq and Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Islamic extremists destroying mosques in Iraq Shiite's Al-Qubba Husseiniya mosque explodes in Mosul In pictures: The rise of Isis Islamic extremists destroying mosques in Iraq Smoke and debris go up in the air as Shiite's Al-Qubba Husseiniya mosque explodes in Mosul. Images posted online show that Islamic extremists have destroyed at least 10 ancient shrines and Shiite mosques in territory - the city of Mosul and the town of Tal Afar - they have seized in northern Iraq in recent weeks In pictures: The rise of Isis Islamic extremists destroying mosques in Iraq A bulldozer destroys Sunni's Ahmed al-Rifai shrine and tomb in Mahlabiya district outside of Tal Afar In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces celebrate after clashes with followers of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi, in front of his home in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces arrest a follower of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi after clashes with his followers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces arrest a follower of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi at his home after clashes with his followers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces arrest a follower of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi after clashes with his followers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis A vehicle burns in front of a home of a follower of Shiite cleric Mahmoud al-Sarkhi after clashes with his followers in the Shiite holy city of Karbala, 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An Iraqi woman holds her exhausted son as over 1000 Iraqis who have fled fighting in and around the city of Mosul and Tal Afar wait at a Kurdish checkpoint in the hopes of entering a temporary displacement camp in Khazair In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees Displaced Iraqi women hold pots as they queue to receive food during the first day of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, at an encampment for displaced Iraqis who fled from Mosul and other towns, in the Khazer area outside Irbil, north Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria A militant Islamist fighter waving a flag, cheers as he takes part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa. The fighters held the parade to celebrate their declaration of an Islamic "caliphate" after the group captured territory in neighbouring Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters wave flags as they take part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province Reuters In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters travel in a vehicle as they take part in a military parade along the streets of Syria's northern Raqqa province In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Fighters from the Isis group during a parade with a missile in Raqqa, Syria. Militants from an al-Qaida splinter group held a military parade in their stronghold in northeastern Syria, displaying U.S.-made Humvees, heavy machine guns, and missiles captured from the Iraqi army for the first time since taking over large parts of the Iraq-Syria border In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters during a parade in Raqqa, Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Fighters from the Isis group during a parade in Raqqa, Syria. Militants from the splinter group held a military parade in their stronghold in northeastern Syria, displaying U.S.-made Humvees, heavy machine guns, and missiles captured from the Iraqi army for the first time since taking over large parts of the Iraq-Syria border In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters hold a military parade in their stronghold in northeastern Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria Isis fighters during a parade in Raqqa, Syria In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Syria A member loyal to the Isis waves an Isis flag in Raqqa In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi anti-government gunmen from Sunni tribes in the western Anbar province march during a protest in Ramadi, west of Baghdad. The United Nations warned that Iraq is at a "crossroads" and appealed for restraint, as a bloody four-day wave of violence killed 195 people. The violence is the deadliest so far linked to demonstrations that broke out in Sunni areas of the Shiite-majority country more than four months ago, raising fears of a return to all-out sectarian conflict In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi security forces hold up a flag of the Isis group they captured during an operation to regain control of Dallah Abbas north of Baqouba, the capital of Iraq's Diyala province, 35 miles (60 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Iraq Isis fighters parade in the northern city of Mosul In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Volunteers, who have joined the Iraqi army to fight against the predominantly Sunni militants from the radical Isis group, demonstrate their skills during a graduation ceremony after completing their field training in Najaf In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Kurdish Peshmerga troops fire a cannon during clashes with militants of the Isis group in Jalawla, Diyala province In pictures: The rise of Isis Lieutenant General Qassem Atta speaks during a press conference Iraqi Prime Minister's security spokesman, Lieutenant General Qassem Atta speaks during a press conference about the latest military development in Iraq, in the capital Baghdad. Iraqi forces pressed a campaign to retake militant-held Tikrit, clashing with jihadist-led Sunni militants nearby and pounding positions inside the city with air strikes in their biggest counter-offensive so far In pictures: The rise of Isis A police station building destroyed by Isis fighters An exterior view of a police station building destroyed by gunmen in Mosul city, northern Iraq. Iraq's new parliament is expected to convene to start the process of setting up a new government, despite deepening political rifts and an ongoing Islamist-led insurgency. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani issued a decree inviting the new House of Representatives to meet and form a new government In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Iraq Smoke billows from an area controlled by the Isis between the Iraqi towns of Naojul and Tuz Khurmatu, both located north of the capital Baghdad, as Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga forces take part in an operation to repel the Sunni militants In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An elderly Iraqi woman is helped into a temporary displacement camp for Iraqis caught-up in the fighting in and around the city of Mosul in Khazair In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An Iraqi Christian woman fleeing the violence in the village of Qaraqush, about 30 kms east of the northern province of Nineveh, cries upon her arrival at a community center in the Kurdish city of Arbil in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraqi refugees An Iraqi woman, who fled with her family from the northern city of Mosul, prays with a copy of the Quran AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Isis fighters in Iraq The body of an Isis militant killed during clashes with Iraqi security forces on the outskirts of the city of Samarra Reuters In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Iraqi civilians inspect the damage at a market after an air strike by the Iraqi army in central Mosul EPA In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Members of the Al-Abbas brigades, who volunteered to protect the Shiite Muslim holy sites in Karbala against Sunni militants fighting the Baghdad government, parade in the streets of the city AP In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis Shia tribesmen gather in Baghdad to take up arms against Sunni insurgents marching on the capital. Thousands have volunteered to bolster defences AFP/Getty In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq crisis A van carrying volunteers joining Iraqi security forces against Jihadist militants. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced the Iraqi government would arm and equip civilians who volunteered to fight AFP/Getty In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Fighters of the Isis group parade in a commandeered Iraqi security forces armored vehicle down a main road at the northern city of Mosul In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq An Islamist fighter, identified as Abu Muthanna al-Yemeni from Britain (R), speaks in this still image taken undated video shot at an unknown location and uploaded to a social media website. Five Islamist fighters identified as Australian and British nationals have called on Muslims to join the wars in Syria and Iraq, in the new video released by the Isis In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Al-Qa’ida inspired militants stand with captured Iraqi Army Humvee at a checkpoint belonging to Iraqi Army outside Beiji refinery some 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Baghdad. The fighting at Beiji comes as Iraq has asked the U.S. for airstrikes targeting the militants from the Isis group. While U.S. President Barack Obama has not fully ruled out the possibility of launching airstrikes, such action is not imminent in part because intelligence agencies have been unable to identify clear targets on the ground, officials said In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants attacked Iraq's main oil refinein Baiji as they pressed an offensive that has seen them capture swathes of territory, a manager and a refinery employee said In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants from the Isis group parading with their weapons in the northern city of Baiji in the in Salaheddin province In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq A smoke rises after an attack by Isis militants on the country's largest oil refinery in Beiji, some 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of the capital, Baghdad. Iraqi security forces battled insurgents targeting the country's main oil refinery and said they regained partial control of a city near the Syrian border, trying to blunt an offensive by Sunni militants who diplomats fear may have also seized some 100 foreign workers In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants of the Isis group stand next to captured vehicles left behind by Iraqi security forces at an unknown location in the Salaheddin province. For militant groups, the fight over public perception can be even more important than actual combat, turning military losses into propaganda victories and battlefield successes into powerful tools to build support for the cause In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq An injured fighter (C) from the Isis group after a battle with Iraqi soldiers at an undisclosed location near the border between Syria and Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Fighters from the Isis aiming at advancing Iraqi troops at an undisclosed location near the border between Syria and Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Fighters from the Isis group taking position at an undisclosed location near the border between Syria and Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Fighters from the Isis group inspecting vehicles of the Iraqi army after they were seized at an undisclosed location near the border between Syria and Iraq In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq One Iraqi captive, a corporal, is reluctant to say the slogan, and has to be shouted at repeatedly before he obeys Sky News In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Iraqi captives held by the extremists Sky News In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Iraqi captives held by the extremists Sky News In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants of the Isis group force captured Iraqi security forces members to the transport In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants of the Isis group transporting dozens of captured Iraqi security forces members to an unknown location in the Salaheddin province ahead of executing them In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq A major offensive spearheaded by Isis but also involving supporters of executed dictator Saddam Hussein has overrun all of one province and chunks of three others In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Militants of the Isis group executing dozens of captured Iraqi security forces members at an unknown location in the Salaheddin province In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Isis militants taking position at a Iraqi border post on the Syrian-Iraqi border between the Iraqi Nineveh province and the Syrian town of Al-Hasakah In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Isis rebels show their flag after seizing an army post AFP/Getty Images In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Isis militants waving an Islamist flag after the seizure of an Iraqi army checkpoint in Salahuddin Getty Images In pictures: The rise of Isis Iraq Demonstrators chant slogans as they carry al-Qa’ida flags in front of the provincial government headquarters in Mosul, 225 miles (360 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad. In the week since it captured Iraq's second-largest city, Mosul, a Muslim extremist group has tried to win over residents and has stopped short of widely enforcing its strict brand of Islamic law, residents say. Churches remain unharmed and street cleaners are back at work

Mr Maliki has blamed the fall of Mosul on an unlikely plot by Kurds working with Isis to capture the city. “What happened in Mosul was a conspiracy, it was planned in Ankara and then the conspiracy moved to Erbil,” Mr Maliki wrote on his Facebook page. Far from it, says Iraqi MP Khasro Goran. “Maliki became very arrogant,” he said, “and he believed his generals were right, and informing him. He wanted to be the hero, that’s the only conspiracy.”

That is also the finding of the Parliamentary Commission on Security and Defence, says its head, Hakim al-Zamily. “We investigated about 100 people and we did not discover any conspiracy,” he said. “The only clear result was that there was a lack of professionalism and an absence of the right people in the right places.

“The fact that unprofessional commanders were chosen was the main reason that the forces were not doing their job. They were chosen arbitrarily, based on their loyalty.”

The report adopted in August last year by the Iraqi Parliament blames Mr Maliki as well as some 30 other officials including the former Mosul governor and Saadoun al-Dulaimi, the acting Defence Minister at the time. It concluded that Mr Maliki had an inaccurate picture of the threat to Mosul because he chose commanders who engaged in corruption and failed to hold them accountable.

Its main conclusion was that Mosul fell because the military operation had no clear leader. The army was ill prepared for the battle, and when the generals left the soldiers followed suit. But it does not focus on the missed opportunities of the litany of intelligence warnings that were ignored.

Mr Maliki’s office, contacted both by phone and email, repeatedly declined to respond to The Independent’s request for a comment on any of the allegations made against him. He has previously criticised the findings of the Iraqi MPs’ investigation.

The report's main conclusion was that Mosul fell because the military operation had no clear leader (AFP/Getty)

“There is no value in result that came out from the parliamentary commission about the fall of Mosul – it was dominated by political differences and it was absent of objectivity,” he said.

Mr Zamily also blames the Americans for failing to act on the information they received. “Under the strategic agreement with Iraq they should have prevented the Iraqi forces from losing this way,” he said. “They should have supplied Iraqi forces with all the information they had, and protected them.”