After US Catches and Kills Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, A $10 Million Bounty For Information On The New Isis Leader

 Amir Mohammed Sa’id Abdal Rahman al-Mawla

by Stavros Atlamazoglou


The U.S. government has increased the bounty for information that will lead to the capture or killing of the new leader of the Islamic State to $10 million.


Amir Mohammed Sa’id Abdal Rahman al-Mawla, also known as Hajji Abdallah, became the new leader of ISIS after his predecessor Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed during a U.S. Special Operations operation in October 2019.


The 46-year-old al-Mawla was a member of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), serving as a religious scholar. With the advent of ISIS, al-Mawla steadily rose through prominence to become a deputy emir (regional governor) before getting the top job in the battered terrorist group after al-Baghdadi’s death. His past as a religious scholar meant that al-Mawla has been a protagonist in the creation, through religious edicts, of the ideology that ISIS utilized to justify a number of its crimes.


“This reward is an important moment in our fight against ISIS and its branches and networks around the world. As ISIS is defeated on the battlefield, we are determined to identify and find the group’s leaders so that the global coalition of nations fighting to defeat ISIS can continue to destroy ISIS remnants and thwart its global ambitions,” stated the State Department announcement.


Al-Mawla has been a leading voice in the prosecution, genocide, and trafficking of the Yazidis, a religious minority located in the northwest of Iraq. Al-Mawla, moreover, has managed and led a number of terrorist operations outside Iraq and Syria.


The bounty is offered through the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program. The initial bounty, $5 million, was set in August 2019. Last March, al-Mawla was designated a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. As a result, the terrorist leader’s property and interests have been sanctioned and U.S. citizens are prohibited from making any transaction with him.


Although ISIS has been defeated as a major ground threat, small pockets of resistance and sleeper cells still exist and pose a significant danger in the fragile region. More dangerous, however, is the poisonous ideology of the terrorist organization and its ability to motivate individuals and groups to acts of extremism around the world.


Al-Baghdadi, the previous leader, was killed in a daring operation. During the mission, an assault element comprised of Delta Force operators and Rangers from the 75th Ranger Regiment raided the compound in which al-Baghdadi was hiding in Syria. After a brief firefight, the ISIS leader detonated a suicide vest, killing himself and a number of his own children.


The Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) raid was named Operation Kayla Muller after the American humanitarian aid worker who caught, raped, and killed by ISIS in 2015. [SOURCE]

As Caliphate Ends Where Is Its Leader Baghdadi?

Baghdad (AFP) - The world's most wanted man who has so far eluded capture, Islamic State group chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has seen his "caliphate" crumble and its last shred of territory in Syria evaporate on Saturday.

After declaring himself caliph in 2014, Baghdadi held sway over seven million people across swathes of Syria and Iraq, where IS implemented its brutal version of Islamic law.

But that land has been whittled down to disjointed sleeper cells by years of fighting, including a ferocious bombing campaign by the US-led coalition.

Reclusive even when IS was at the peak of its power, the 47-year-old Iraqi, who suffers from diabetes, has been rumoured to have been wounded or killed several times in the past. And his whereabouts have never been confirmed.

So, with his proto-state gone and a $25-million US bounty on his head, where is Baghdadi?

"He only has three companions: his older brother Jumaa, his driver and bodyguard Abdullatif al-Jubury, whom he has known since childhood, and his courier Saud al-Kurdi," said Hisham al-Hashemi, an Iraqi specialist in IS.

Hashemi said the quartet is likely laying low somewhere in Syria's vast Badia desert, which stretches from the eastern border with Iraq to the sweeping province of Homs.

That is where his son Hudhayfa al-Badri was reportedly killed in July by three Russian guided missiles, he added.

- 'The Ghost' -

Nicknamed "The Ghost", he has not appeared in public since he delivered a sermon at Mosul's famed Al-Nuri mosque in 2014 declaring himself "caliph".

His last voice recording to his supporters was released in August, eight months after Iraq announced it had defeated IS and as US-backed forces closed in next door in Syria.

But as the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces pressed the "final battle" against IS's last sliver of territory, a spokesman for the US-backed group said the elusive leader was likely not there.

"We do not think he is in Syria," Mustafa Bali told AFP, without elaborating.

But some of those who fled Baghouz in the dying days of the caliphate, claimed they had been ordered to leave by Baghdadi.

"Had the caliph not ordered it, we would not have left," one woman told AFP in late February, referring to Baghdadi who was not believed to have been among the jihadists in their last holdout.

Keeping a low profile -- in contrast to slain Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden -- has helped Baghdadi survive for years.

Born Ibrahim Awad al-Badri in 1971, the passionate football fan came from modest beginnings in Samarra, north of Baghdad.

His high school results were not good enough for law school and his poor eyesight prevented him from joining the army, so he moved to the Baghdad district of Tobchi to study Islam.

"He had a vision, early on, of where he wanted to go and what kind of organisation he wanted to create," said Sofia Amara, author of a 2017 documentary that unveiled exclusive documents on Baghdadi.

After US-led forces invaded Iraq in 2003, he founded his own insurgent organisation but never carried out major attacks.

When he was arrested and held in a US detention facility in southern Iraq in February 2004, he was still very much a second- or third-tier jihadist.

But it was Camp Bucca -- later dubbed "the University of Jihad" -- where Baghdadi came of age as a jihadist.

"People there realised that this nobody, this shy guy was an astute strategist," Amara said.

He was released at the end of 2004 for lack of evidence. Iraqi security services arrested him twice subsequently, in 2007 and 2012, but let him go because they did not know who he was.

- Brutal strategist -

                                                               

In 2005, this father of five from two different wives pledged allegiance to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the brutal leader of Iraq's Al-Qaeda franchise.

Zarqawi was killed by an American drone strike in 2006, and after his successor was also eliminated, Baghdadi took the helm in 2010.

He revived the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), expanded into Syria in 2013 and declared independence from Al-Qaeda.

In the following years, Baghdadi's Islamic State group captured swathes of territory, set up a brutal system of government, and inspired thousands to join the "caliphate" from abroad.

Baghdadi was raised in a family divided between a religious clan and officers loyal to Saddam's secular Baath party.

Years later, his jihadist group incorporated ex-Baathists, capitalising on the bitterness many officers felt after the American move to dissolve the Iraqi army in 2003.

That gave his leadership the military legitimacy he personally lacked and formed a solid backbone of what was to become IS, combining extreme religious propaganda with ferocious guerrilla efficiency.

Uncharismatic and an average orator, Baghdadi was described by his repudiated ex-wife Saja al-Dulaimi, who now lives in Lebanon, as a "normal family man" who was good with children.

He is thought to have had three wives in total, Iraqi Asma al-Kubaysi, Syrian Isra al-Qaysi and another, more recently, from the Gulf.

He has been accused of repeatedly raping girls and women he kept as "sex slaves", including a pre-teen Yazidi girl and US aid worker Kayla Mueller, who was subsequently killed. [SOURCE]

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi: Execution Videos by ISIS Are Now Banned

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has banned any more execution videos by the Islamic State, but the orders reportedly have created a division with the organization's ranks.

ARA News reported that, according to sources, al-Baghdadi was responding to the feelings of Muslims who regarded the videos as "disgusting and scary to children."

The video ban has upset some within ISIS who see the execution videos as an extension of terrorism activities.

"Some of IS militants supported Baghdadi's decision, taking into consideration criticism of the public that describes scenes of beheadings as barbaric," wrote ARA News' Jan Nasro. "While other militants rejected the decision saying that such scenes are meant to intimidate their enemies, represented by western powers, and not the common folk."

According to the website Middle East Eye.net, a number of Arabic-language news agencies said on Friday that Baghdadi explained his decision in a statement delivered to media offices in Syria and Iraq.

The website said Baghdadi ordered that his followers don't include scenes of the actual executions in their videos and limit them to moments before or after the act.

ISIS execution videos often show men in orange jumpsuits kneeling, heads bowed, with a black-clad masked gunman behind each one, with the ISIS flag in the background, noted Middle East Eye.net.

Past videos of executions of hostages – which have included non-combatants such as journalists and aid workers – had sparked anger not only in the United States, but in other parts of the Middle East.

In February, an ISIS video showing a Jordan pilot being burned alive, sparked Jordanians to call for acts of revenge against the organization, according to CBS News.

"(The video ban) won't eliminate the IS-led horrors that have been seen by people around the world over the past couple of years," Ferid Hisso, a Syrian politician and lawyer, told ARA News. "Instead of banning the release of such videos, Baghdadi should have rather banned the crimes behind the scenes. But he has already justified the barbarism of his followers, and his decision makes no sense."[source]

File image of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, self-proclaimed leader of ISIS.

By Pamela Engel

The head of the Islamic State is reportedly injured so badly he can barely move, Kareem Shaheen at The Guardian reports.
"Sources tell us Baghdadi is still alive, but still unable to move due to spinal injury sustained in the March air strike," Shaheen tweeted.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who last year declared himself "caliph" of the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL, and Daesh), was reportedly wounded in a US-led air strike in March.
Martin Chulov at The Guardian, who last week broke the news of the air strike, also says his sources tell him that Baghdadi is still alive and is being treated by doctors from Mosul. He has reportedly suffered a spinal injury.
Information on Baghdadi's reported injury and the air strike that supposedly caused it is still sketchy.
Two officials, one Western and one Iraqi, confirmed to The Guardian that the air strike targeted multiple cars in the town of Baaj in northwestern Iraq on March 18, but the Pentagon said the air strike was not aimed at a high-value target and that they "have no reason to believe it was Baghdadi."
Chulov reports that officials didn't know that Baghdadi was in one of the cars targeted in the airstrike. He was reportedly staying in that area of Iraq because he "knew from the war that the Americans did not have much cover there," a source who is aware of Baghdadi's movements told The Guardian.
Baghdadi is reportedly recovering slowly but has not resumed day-to-day control of ISIS. A former physics teacher from Mosul was installed as ISIS's new temporary leader while Baghdadi recovers, an Iraqi government adviser told Newsweek last week.
ISIS control zones as of April 2015
Newsweek describes Abu Alaa Afri as a "rising star" within ISIS, and the Iraqi government adviser, Hisham al Hashimi, said Afri had become even more important than the injured "caliph" of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Afri will become ISIS' new permanent leader if Baghdadi dies, Hashimi said.
Having a caliph with a background of religious education is important to ISIS, which has shaped its self-proclaimed caliphate around a strict interpretation of sharia law. The group recruits people to come live in its territory by marketing it as an Islamic utopia.
Der Spiegel reported recently that early leaders of ISIS, many of whom are former Iraqi intelligence officers from ousted dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, decided to make Baghdadi caliph because he, as an "educated cleric," would "give the group a religious face."[source]