Known for his brutality, Baghdadi was world’s most-wanted terrorist
The son of a pious Sunni family from the Iraqi district of Samarra, al-Baghdadi parlayed religious fervour, hatred of nonbelievers and the power of the internet into the path that catapulted him onto the global stage. He commanded an organisation that, at its peak, controlled a territory the size of Britain from which it directed and inspired acts of terror in more than three dozen countries.
Al-Baghdadi was the world’s most-wanted terrorist chieftain, the target of a $25 million bounty from the American government. He evaded capture for nearly a decade by hewing to a series of extreme security measures, even when meeting with his most-trusted associates. “They even made me remove my wristwatch,” recounted Ismail al-Ithawy, a top aide who was captured last year. After being stripped of electronic devices, including phones and cameras, al-Ithawy recalled, they were blindfolded, loaded onto buses and driven for hours to an unknown location. When they were finally allowed to remove their blindfolds, they would find al-Baghdadi sitting before them.
Much of the world first learned of al-Baghdadi in 2014, when his men overran onethird of Iraq and half of neighbouring Syria and declared the territory a caliphate.
Acting under the orders of a “Delegated Committee” headed by al-Baghdadi, IS imposed its violent interpretation of Islam in these territories.
The message of these new jihadis was clear: Anyone, anywhere, could act in the group’s name. That allowed IS to multiply its lethality by remotely inspiring attacks, carried out by men who never set foot in a training camp. In this fashion, IS was responsible for the deaths of thousands of people around the world. A shooting at an office party in San Bernardino, California. An attack on a Christmas market in Germany. A truck attack in Nice, France, on Bastille Day. Suicide bombings at churches on Easter Sunday in Sri Lanka.
Born Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri, al-Baghdadi was a mediocre student. His high school transcript shows that his highest grade was in art (95 out of 100), while in subjects like algebra, he mustered scores in the low 50s. He found his place, they said, at the local mosque. Baghdadi was also a football enthusiast. “He was obsessed with scoring goals; he would become nervous if he didn’t,” a childhood associate told media site al-Monitor.
He earned a bachelor’s degree and then enrolled at Saddam University, an institution dedicated to Islamic studies where he earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in topics related to Islamic scripture.
Less than a year after the US invasion to topple Saddam Hussein began in 2003, the house of al-Baghdadi’s brother-in-law, who had taken up arms against the American occupation, was raided. Al-Baghdadi was swept up in the raid. He spent 11 months in a detention centre. Some analysts have argued that it was his time in American custody that radicalised him.
“It’s hard to imagine we could have had a crystal ball then that would tell us he’d become head of ISIS,” a Pentagon official told NYT a decade later. After his release in late 2004, he disappeared from view for years.
In 2009, security forces recovered a cache of documents in a safe house used by IS militants and found the name “Abu Dua” on the group’s personnel list. Not long after, in May of 2010, the insurgents announced their new leader: It was Abu Dua, who now introduced himself to the world as “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.”
Al-Baghdadi’s reclusiveness fed rumours of his demise, all of which proved to be untrue. Each time, he resurfaced in audio recordings, and later videos, thumbing his nose at the world.
Hussam Mehdi, an IS member who is now in jail in Baghdad, said isolation came easily to al-Baghdadi. Mehdi thought back to the men who had come before al-Baghdadi at the helm of the Islamic State. “Abu Musab was killed,” he said. “Abu Omar was killed. But Abu Bakr lasted.”
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References
- ^ Sri Lanka (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
- ^ al-Monitor (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
- ^ Saddam Hussein (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
- ^ Baghdad (timesofindia.indiatimes.com)
from Gulf News, Latest Middle East News Headlines & Live News Updates - Times of India https://ift.tt/2pl1CLu
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