Category Archives: Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Widow of Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi given death sentence by Iraqi court

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Judgement deems one of Baghdadi’s widows complicit in crimes against Yazidi women

An Iraqi court has issued a death sentence against one of the widows of the late Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, alleging that she was complicit in crimes committed against Yazidi women captured by the militant group.

The ruling comes weeks before the 10-year mark since IS launched a series of attacks against the Yazidi religious minority in the northern Iraqi region of Sinjar in early August 2014, killing and capturing thousands – including women and girls who were subjected to human trafficking and sexual abuse. The UN said the campaign against the Yazidis amounted to genocide.

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‘The militias are not allowing us back’: Sunnis languish in camps, years after recapture of Mosul

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At least 400,000 people who fled Isis are still interred in the north of the country, fearing they are not wanted in postwar Iraq

On a midsummer morning six years ago, Ziad Abdulqader Nasir’s short walk to Friday prayers at Mosul’s Great Mosque of al-Nuri, one of Iraq’s oldest shrines, was abruptly interrupted by the arrival of stern men carrying guns.

Nasir and his neighbours were ushered inside, some of the newcomers set up cameras, and others sat the puzzled worshippers in neat lines on the carpet.

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Sister of killed Isis leader captured, says Turkish official

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Unnamed senior figure hopes for ‘trove of intelligence’ from Rasmiya Awad after raid in Syrian border town

Turkey claims to have captured the sister of killed Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and is interrogating her and her husband and daughter-in-law, who were also detained.

A senior Turkish official told Reuters that Rasmiya Awad, 65, was seized on Monday during a raid near the Turkish-controlled northern Syrian town of Azaz. When captured, she was also accompanied by five children.

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Visual guide to the raid that killed Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

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Baghdadi died in a US raid on a compound near the village of Barisha in north-west Syria

The US began to receive intelligence on the whereabouts of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi about a month before the 26 October raid, according to Donald Trump. Intelligence officials were able to scope out his exact location – near the village of Barisha in north-west Syria – in mid October.

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Baghdadi raid video released as US general warns of Isis reprisal attacks

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General Kenneth McKenzie says Isis will remain a threat as he shows footage of raid on leader’s Syria hideout

The US military has said it expects a retribution attack in the wake of the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as it released the first footage of the raid by commandos on the Isis leader’s hideout.

The Pentagon showed brief black-and-white aerial footage on Wednesday night of the raid and the subsequent bombing of Baghdadi’s compound in northern Syria.

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How the US caught up with Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi | podcast

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The Guardian’s Martin Chulov describes how US special forces finally tracked down Baghdadi, who was killed in a raid at the weekend. Plus: Robert Booth on the criticism of the London fire brigade’s response to the Grenfell Tower disaster

US special forces finally caught up with the Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, on Saturday at a safe house in the Syrian province of Idlib, one of the few areas of the country still outside regime control. In a night-time raid, Baghdadi detonated a suicide vest and killed himself and three of his children, according to Donald Trump.

The Guardian’s Middle East correspondent, Martin Chulov, has followed the rise and fall of Isis in the past five years from close quarters. He tells Rachel Humphreys what Baghdadi’s death will mean to the terrorist organisation, which has lost almost all the territory it held at its peak.

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Syrian Kurds say spy stole Baghdadi’s underpants for DNA test

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Syrian Democratic Forces also claim they played a key role in tracking down Baghdadi to a compound in northern Syria

Syrian Kurds say they managed to place a spy in Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s inner circle who stole a pair of the Isis leader’s underpants to prove his identity and then helped guide US soldiers to his Syrian hideout.

The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) claim they played a key role in tracking down Baghdadi to a compound in northern Syria where he was reportedly planning his escape over the nearby border into Turkey.

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Pelosi slams Trump for cutting Democrats out of loop on Baghdadi raid

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Top Democrats reacted with anger to Donald Trump’s decision to go ahead with the Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi raid without giving them advance notice, on grounds that they were not to be trusted with such highly sensitive information.

Related: Trump impeachment: Schiff expects battle over key witness John Bolton

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Nowhere left to run: how the US finally caught up with Isis leader Baghdadi

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The hunt for the Islamic State leader had lasted years until Iraqi officials got a break last month

Cornered in a dead-end tunnel, with a robot creeping towards him, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had nowhere left to run. Dogs barked in the darkness, a US soldier called out … and then came the thundering explosion that killed the world’s most wanted man – together with three terrified children he was using as human shields.

The US military finally caught up with the Islamic State leader in a remote hamlet of northwestern Syria, but not before he detonated a suicide vest strapped to his body as special forces troops disgorged from helicopters and crouched near the frugal stone house in which he was hiding.

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Killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi gives Trump lifeline amid political battle

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President’s supporters framing the impeachment hearings as an unpatriotic attack on a leader keeping America safe

The killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has given Donald Trump a lifeline in the midst of a battle for his own political survival and he has grabbed it with both hands.

Trump’s fifty minute television appearance on Sunday to announce the successful mission began with a sombre announcement before drifting into something more rambling and vainglorious, foreshadowing how he will use it for political ends, and as a club to swing at his political enemies pushing for his impeachment.

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Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi killed in US raid – video

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Donald Trump confirmed on Sunday that Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed in a US special forces raid in the north-west of Syria. According to the president, the Isis leader died 'running into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering and crying and screaming all the way'. Trump made the announcement in Washington hours after tweeting: 'Something very big has just happened!'

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Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s death comes as new order takes shape in Middle East

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In aftermath of Isis’s toxic mix of chaos and intolerance, new spheres of influence are being demarcated

Reports of his death had been frequent – and exaggerated. But not this time. Even as US forces were flying to Iraq the remains of the Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was killed in Syria in the early hours of Saturday, a debate about his legacy was stirring.

For more than five years, Baghdadi, who was known by birth as Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim Ali al-Badri, was the most wanted man on the planet – a figure who had turned an already potent post-invasion insurgency in Iraq into a formidable terrorist juggernaut that changed the course of history.

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Donald Trump confirms Isis leader died in US raid – video

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The US president has said Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of Islamic State, was killed in a raid by US special forces in north-west Syria. Baghdadi detonated a suicide vest after running into a dead-end tunnel, killing himself and three of his children, Donald Trump said

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Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been killed, says Donald Trump – live updates

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Donald Trump makes statement following US raid in north-west Syria

President Donald Trump has just started speaking. He says last night the US brought the “world’s greatest terrorist leader to justice”. “Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead,” he says.

President Trump is about to give a press conference at the White House. You can follow it live above or on YouTube here.

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Who was Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and why is his death important?

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Self-declared caliph was operational leader of Isis and symbol of its Islamic credentials

Baghdadi is thought to have been born in the central Iraqi city of Samarra in 1971. Though a weak student, whose poor eyesight disqualified him from joining the Iraqi military, he rose to command al-Qaida’s Iraqi division and then broke away to form Islamic State (Isis).

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Isis leader purportedly urges members to free detainees from camps

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Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi appears to claim in audio recording that Isis is still carrying out attacks

An audio recording was released on Monday in which the leader of the Islamic State group purportedly called on members of the extremist group to do all they can to free Isis detainees and women held in jails and camps.

The alleged audio recording of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, which also said Isis is carrying out attacks in different countries, is believed to be his first public statement since April, when he appeared in a video for the first time in five years.

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Isis wife reveals role in helping CIA hunt for Baghdadi

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Umm Sayyaf, sentenced to death in Iraq, tells how she exposed fugitive’s secrets

The most senior female Islamic State captive has played a central role in the hunt for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, helping identify safe houses used by the fugitive terrorist leader and in one case pinpointing his location in Mosul, the Guardian can reveal.

The Isis woman, Nisrine Assad Ibrahim, better known by her nom de guerre, Umm Sayyaf, has helped the CIA and Kurdish intelligence officers build a detailed portrait of Baghdadi’s movements, hideouts and networks, investigators have disclosed. The claims have been confirmed by Umm Sayyaf in her first interview since being captured in a Delta Force raid in Syria four years ago that killed her husband, the then Isis oil minister.

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Isis leader Baghdadi appears in video for first time in five years

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Video comes weeks after Islamic State was ousted from last stronghold in Syria

The fugitive Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has appeared in a propaganda video for the first time in five years, in which he acknowledges the terrorist group’s defeat in the Syrian town of Baghuz.

The appearance is only Baghdadi’s second on video, and comes weeks after the remnants of Isis were ousted from their last organised stronghold in the eastern Syrian desert. Looking heavier than when he proclaimed the existence of the now-collapsed caliphate in mid-2014, Baghdadi blames its demise on the “savagery” of Christians.

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‘The fighting was intense’: witness tells of two-day attempt to kill Isis leader

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Foreign fighters reportedly executed after launching attack against Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Fresh details have emerged of the coup attempt against Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, with witnesses claiming foreign members of the terror group lost a two-day battle with his bodyguards before being rounded up and executed.

A witness who spoke to the Guardian after being smuggled from the last hamlet in eastern Syria held by Isis, said the clash took place in al Keshma, a village next to Baghouz in September, three months earlier than regional intelligence officials believed it had taken place.

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