Islamic State (ISIS) flag
Islamic State (ISIS) flagReuters

Australia is seeking the extradition of its most wanted Islamic State (ISIS) terror suspect who has been caught alive by Turkey, the government said Saturday, according to AFP.

The announcement followed a New York Times report that ISIS operative Neil Prakash had been caught by Turkish forces several weeks ago as he tried to enter their country from Syria.

Prakash was a senior recruiter for ISIS and has been linked to terror plots to kill Australians.

In May, it was reported that he had been killed in an American air strike in Iraq, but the New York Times said he was only wounded, not killed, in Mosul on April 29.

"An individual we believe to be Neil Prakash has been arrested and detained in Turkey," a government spokesperson said in a statement quoted by AFP on Saturday.

"Prakash is subject to a formal extradition request from Australia."

Prakash, who is in his early twenties, left Australia in 2013.

He has been linked to a failed Melbourne plot to behead a police officer in April last year, as well as to an 18-year-old who was killed after stabbing two police officers in Melbourne in 2014.

Australia has long been concerned about home-grown extremism and raised the terror threat alert level to high in September of 2014, the same month in which it arrested15 terror suspects of an ISIS cell that was planning to behead a random member of the public in a campaign of terror.

Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has called Prakash the senior Australian operative in ISIS.

Reported to be of Indian, Fijian and Cambodian background, Prakash used the internet "to promote the evil ideology" of the jihadist group "and recruit Australian men, women and children -- many of whom are either still in the conflict zone or dead.

"Prakash and others ruthlessly target and groom our children -- vulnerable children -- with hateful propaganda of terrorism which perverts the religion of Islam," Turnbull told parliament in May.

Known as Abu Khaled al-Cambodi, Prakash was reportedly on a list of high-value ISIS recruiters targeted by the U.S. in drone attacks in Iraq.

He worked with an English-speaking cell trying to radicalize people in the West to fight for ISIS.

The government statement said Canberra had worked with Ankara on Prakash's arrest and would collaborate further on the extradition process.