[DAWN] The world's most wanted man who has so far eluded capture, the bad boy Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
(IS) group chief His Supreme Immensity, Caliph of the Faithful and Galactic Overlord, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
 ...the head of ISIS, or what remains of it, and a veteran of the Abu Graib jailhouse. Looks like a new messiah to bajillions of Moslems, like just another dead-eyed mass murder to the rest of us. So far he has been killed at least four times, though not yet by a stake through the heart...
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 United States-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 maimed 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.
But there has been no sign of al-Baghdadi.
"The Coalition is not holding him nor do we know where he is," US-led coalition front man Col. Sean Ryan told The News Agency that Dare Not be Named.
Mohammed Kheder, co-founder of the Sound and Picture group which documents IS, said the last time al-Baghdadi was spotted in the area was about 15 months ago, citing sources on the ground and the testimony of the people who left the area.
In Twitter posts, Kheder’s group has said it cannot rule out the possibility al-Baghdadi was detained long ago ‐ "especially since many of American airdrops and night operations targeting IS leaders along the Iraqi border have not been disclosed by the coalition."
Iraqi intelligence officials believe al-Baghdadi is hiding somewhere in the desert stretching across the Syrian-Iraqi border, using tunnels to move around.
"He does not use any communication equipment or internet to avoid detection by coalition planes," a senior intelligence official said. "When he wants to see someone from the organization, they are brought to him individually in cars that stop around two hours away from where al-Baghdadi is, and then they are brought to him individually on cycle of violences."
Another official, a colonel, said the Americans recently targeted some of al-Baghdadi’s closest people, including his personal bodyguard Khaled al-Saudi ‐ known as Khallad ‐ who was killed last week near the area of al-Baaj along the Iraqi-Syrian border.
Khallad’s wife was jugged
Drop the heater, Studs, or you're hist'try!
. Another close aide to al-Baghdadi was also recently killed and his wife captured, the colonel said, adding that the Americans believe such targets will soon lead them to al-Baghdadi. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to share intelligence information.
Al-Baghdadi was born Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri al-Samarrai in 1971 in Samarra, Iraq, and adopted his nom de guerre early on. According to IS-affiliated websites, he was detained by US forces in Iraq and sent to Bucca prison in February 2004 for his anti-US hard boy activity.
He was released 10 months later, after which he joined the al-Qaeda branch in Iraq of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He later assumed control of the group, known at the time as the Islamic State of Iraq.
After Syria’s civil war erupted in 2011, al-Baghdadi dispatched comrades to the neighboring country to create a like-minded Sunni bad boy group there. The group, which came to be known as the Nusra Front, initially welcomed moderate Sunni rebels who were part of the uprising against Syrian Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad
Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor. If he'd stuck with it he'd have had a good practice by now...
Over time, more of his fighters and possibly al-Baghdadi himself relocated to Syria, pursuing his plan to restore a medieval Islamic state, or caliphate. In April 2013, al-Baghdadi announced what amounted to a hostile takeover of the Nusra Front, saying he was merging it into a new group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
... the current version of al-Qaeda in Iraq, just as blood-thirsty and well-beloved as the original...
. Nusra Front’s leader Abu Mohammad al-Golani refused to accept the takeover ‐ as did al-Qaeda’s central leadership, which broke with al-Baghdadi.
Al-Baghdadi’s fighters went onto to capture a contiguous stretch of territory across Iraq and Syria, including key cities such as Raqqa in Syria and djinn-infested Mosul
... the home of a particularly ferocious and hairy djinn...
in Iraq. In June 2014, the group announced its own state, or caliphate. al-Baghdadi became the declared caliph of the newly renamed Islamic State group.
The group ruled with a virulently extreme interpretation of Islamic law. The atrocities, massacres and beheadings by al-Baghdadi’s gunnies that followed ‐ many broadcast in grisly and macabre video postings on hard boy websites ‐ secured IS a spot in some of the darkest, most brutal annals of modern history.
Throughout it all, al-Baghdadi was in the shadows.
His only known public appearance on video was on June 29, 2014, when he appeared as a black-robed figure to deliver a sermon from the pulpit of Mosul’s Great Mosque of al-Nuri in which he urged Moslems around the world to swear allegiance to the caliphate and obey him as its leader.
"It is a burden to accept this responsibility to be in charge of you," he says in the video. "I am not better than you or more virtuous than you. If you see me on the right path, help me. If you see me on the wrong path, advise me and halt me. And obey me as far as I obey God."
Little is known about al-Baghdadi’s family. An ex-wife, Saja al-Dulaimi, and her daughter from al-Baghdadi, were detained in Leb in 2014. She was released a year later as part of a swap with al-Qaeda in exchange for kidnapped Lebanese soldiers and coppers. In July 2018, IS announced that al-Baghdadi’s son, Huthaifa al-Badri, had been killed fighting government forces in central Syria.
None of the subsequent reports of al-Baghdadi being killed or maimed were confirmed. In 2017, Russian officials said there was a "high probability" he had been killed in a Russian Arclight airstrike on the outskirts of Raqqa, but US officials later said they believed he was still alive.
He resurfaced in late September 2017, calling in an audio message on followers to burn their enemies everywhere. Another audio was posted last August in which al-Baghdadi urges followers to "persevere" in fighting IS’ enemies ‐ the speech was sprinkled with references to current events to show it was recent.
Experts tracking hard boy figures said the voice in the recordings was al-Baghdadi’s.
It was the last time he was heard of.
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...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State...
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir