THE KILLING OF A TERRORIST

This is a very long article but it is thorough.

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This terrorist leader of ISIL also known as ISI and ISIS ,  Bakr al-Baghdadi sought to establish an Islamic “caliphate” across Syria and Iraq, but he might be remembered more as the ruthlessly calculating leader of the Islamic State group who brought terror to the Middle East and who set up a short-lived organization so extreme that it was shunned even by al-Qaida another terrorist organization.

He is believed to have been born near Samarra, Iraq, in 1971 as

 the third of four sons in the family.  Al-Badri al-Samarrai was apparently born as a member of the tribal group known as Al-Bu Badri tribe. This tribe includes a number of sub-tribes, including the Radhawiyyah, Husseiniyyah, Adnaniyyah, and Quraysh. Al-Baghdadi later claimed that he was descended from the Quraysh tribe and therefore from Muhammad, although there was no evidence to back up his claim.^[

According to a short semi-authorized biography written by Abid Humam al-Athari his grandfather, Haj Ibrahim Ali al-Badri, apparently lived until the age of 94 and witnessed the US occupation of Iraq. His father, Sheikh Awwad, was active in the religious life of the community. Awwad taught the teenaged Baghdadi and got his own start as a teacher, leading children in a neighbourhood while chanting the Quran. Both his father and grandfather were said to be farmers. His mother, whose name is not known, was described as a religious loving person and was notable in the al-Badri tribe. One of Baghdadi's uncles served in Saddam's security services and one of his brothers became an officer in the Iraqi Army. He has another brother, who probably died either during the Iran–Iraq War or the Gulf War while serving in the Iraqi military.

According to an investigation by news outlet Al-Monitor based on an interview with Abu Ahmad, who claimed he has known al-Baghdadi since the 1990s, al-Baghdadi's brothers are named Shamsi, Jomaa and Ahmad. Jomaa is said to be the closest and acts as his bodyguard. Shamsi and al-Baghdadi are said to have argued frequently about al-Baghdadi's decision to join the jihad.  Shamsi was detained several times by US and Iraqi forces and suffers serious health problems. Little is known about Ahmad other than he has had money problems.

Official education records from Samarra High School revealed that al-Baghdadi had to retake his high school certificate in 1991 and scored 481 out of 600 possible points. A few months later, he was deemed unfit for military service by the Iraqi military due to his nearsightedness.  His high-school grades were not good enough for him to study his preferred subject that was law, educational science and languages at the University of Baghdad.

Instead, it is believed that he attended the Islamic University of Baghdad, now known as Iraqi University, where he studied Islamic law and, later, the Quran.

In 2014, American and Iraqi intelligence analysts said that al-Baghdadi has a doctorate for Islamic studies in Quranic studies from Saddam University  in BaghdadAccording to a biography that circulated on extremist internet forums in July 2013, he obtained a BA, MA, and PhD in Islamic studies from the Islamic University of Baghdad. Another report says that he earned a doctorate in education from the University of Baghdad.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, contemporaries of al-Baghdadi describe him in his youth as being shy, unimpressive, a religious scholar, and a man who eschewed violence. For more than a decade, until 2004, he lived in a room attached to a small local mosque in Tobchi, a poor neighbourhood on the western fringes of Baghdad, inhabited by both Shia and Sunni Muslims.^[38]

Ahmed al-Dabash, the leader of the Islamic Army of Iraq and a contemporary of al-Baghdadi who fought against the allied invasion in 2003, gave a description of al-Baghdadi that matched that of the Tobchi residents.

The US and Iraqi Governments know physically who this guy is, but his backstory is just myth," said Patrick Skinner of the Soufan Group, a security consulting firm. "He's managed this secret persona extremely well, and it's enhanced his group's prestige," said Patrick Johnston of the RAND Corporation, adding, "Young people are really attracted to that."^[  Being mostly unrecognized, even in his own organization, Baghdadi was known to be nicknamed at some time about 2015, as "the invisible sheikh."

Some believe that al-Baghdadi was already an Islamic revolutionary during the rule of Saddam Hussein, but other reports contradict this. He may have been a mosque cleric around the time of the US-led invasion in 2003.

After the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, al-Baghdadi helped found the militant group Jamaat Jaysh Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamaah (JJASJ), in which he served as head of  the sharia committee. Al-Baghdadi and his group joined the Mujahideen Shura Council (MSC) in 2006, in which he served as a member of the MSC's sharia committee. Following the renaming of the MSC as the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) in 2006, al-Baghdadi became the general supervisor of the ISI's sharia committee and a member of the group's senior consultative council.

Al-Baghdadi was arrested by US Forces-Iraq on 2^nd  or 4^th  of February 2004 near Fallujah while visiting the home of his old student friend, Nessayif Numan Nessayif, also on the American wanted list at the time^[6] and studied together with al-Baghdadi at the Islamic University.^[53] He was detained at the Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca detention centers under his name Ibrahim Awad Ibrahim al-Badry^[ as a "civilian internee." His detainee card gives his profession as "administrative work (secretary)." The US Department of Defense said al-Baghdadi was imprisoned at Compound 6, which was a medium security Sunni compound. On the 8^th of December 2004, he was released as a prisoner deemed "low level after being recommended for release by the Combined Review and Release Board. 

As an aside, I had addressed the Seventh United Nations Congress held in Milan, Italy in 1985 of the dangers of releasing captured terrorists. Obviously, some  of the  Nations  attending the conference didn’t take my speech seriously.

A number of newspapers and news channels had stated that al-Baghdadi was interned from 2005 to 2009. These reports originate from an interview with the former commander of Camp Bucca, Colonel Kenneth King, and are not substantiated by Department of Defense records. Al-Baghdadi was imprisoned at Camp Bucca along with other future leaders of ISIL

The Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), also known as al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), was the Iraqi division of al-Qaeda. Al-Baghdadi was announced as leader of the ISI on 16 May 2010, following the death of his predecessor Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.

As leader of the ISI, al-Baghdadi was responsible for masterminding large-scale operations such as the 28 August 2011 suicide bombing at the Umm al-Qura Mosque in Baghdad, which killed prominent Sunni lawmaker Khalid al-Fahdawi. Between March and April 2011, the ISI claimed 23 attacks south of Baghdad, all allegedly carried out under al-Baghdadi's command.

Following the death of the founder and head of al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, on the 2^nd of May 2011, in Abbottabad, Pakistan, al-Baghdadi released a statement praising bin Laden and threatening violent retaliation for his death.^[65] On the 5^th  of May 2011, al-Baghdadi claimed responsibility for an attack in Hilla, 100 kilometres (62 miles) south of Baghdad, that killed 24 policemen and wounded 72 others.

On 15 August 2011, a wave of ISI suicide attacks beginning in Mosul resulted in 70 deaths.

 Shortly thereafter, in retaliation for bin Laden's death, the ISI pledged on its website to carry out 100 attacks across Iraq featuring various methods of attack, including raids, suicide attacks, roadside bombs and small arms attacks in all cities and rural areas across the country.

On the 22^nd of  December, 2011, a series of coordinated car bombings and IED (improvised explosive device) attacks struck over a dozen neighborhoods across Baghdad, killing at least 63 people and wounding 180. The assault came just days after the US completed its troop withdrawal from the country. On the 26^th  of December, the ISI released a statement on jihadist internet forums claiming credit for the operation, stating that the targets of the Baghdad attack were "accurately surveyed and explored" and that the "operations were distributed between targeting security headquarters, military patrols and gatherings of the filthy ones of the al-Dajjal Army (the Army of the Anti-Christ in Arabic)," referring to the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr.

On the 2^nd of  December 2012, Iraqi officials claimed that they had captured al-Baghdadi in Baghdad, following a two-month tracking operation. Officials claimed that they had also seized a list containing the names and locations of other al-Qaeda operatives. However, this claim was rejected by the ISI. In an interview with Al Jazeera on the 7^th of December. 2012, Iraq's Acting Interior Minister said that the arrested man was not al-Baghdadi, but rather a sectional commander in charge of an area stretching from the northern outskirts of Baghdad to Taji.

Al-Baghdadi remained leader of the ISI until its formal expansion into Syria in 2013 when, in a statement on 8 April 2013, he announced the formation of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) – alternatively translated from Arabic as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

After being released from Camp Bucca by the Americans,  Baghdadi is believed to have come into contact with the newly formed al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Under the leadership of the Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, AQI became a major force in the Iraqi insurgency and gained notoriety for its brutal tactics, including beheadings. The victims had their heads removed with a knife while they were still alive

When announcing the formation of ISIL, al-Baghdadi stated that the Syrian Civil War jihadist faction, Jabhat al-Nusra who was also known as al-Nusra Front  had been an extension of the ISI in Syria and was now to be merged with ISIL. The leader of Jabhat al-Nusra, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, disputed this merging of the two groups and appealed to al-Qaeda emir Ayman al-Zawahiri, who issued a statement that ISIL should be abolished and that al-Baghdadi should confine his group's activities to Iraq. Al-Baghdadi, however, dismissed al-Zawahiri's ruling and took control of a reported 80% of Jabhat al-Nusra's foreign fighters. In January 2014, ISIL expelled Jabhat al-Nusra from the Syrian city of Raqqa, and in the same month clashes between the two in Syria's Deir ez-Zor Governorate killed hundreds of fighters and displaced tens of thousands of civilians. In February 2014, al-Qaeda disavowed any relations with ISIL

According to several Western sources, al-Baghdadi and ISIL have received private financing from citizens in Saudi Arabia and Qatar and enlisted fighters through recruitment drives in Saudi Arabia in particular.

As an aside, I decided to not to go to Qatar  in 2015 where the 13^th United Nations Congress on Crime Prevention was being held with 199 nations attending since I would be one of the invited speakers addressing  the  conferees  on the subject of  terrorism. I was aware that that the hierarchy of Qatar  was financially supporting terrorists.

 

In early 2006, AQI created a jihadist umbrella organization called the Mujahideen Shura Council, which Baghdadi's group pledged allegiance to and then  joined.

Later that year, following Zarqawi's death in a US air strike, the organisation changed its name to the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI). Baghdadi supervised the ISI's Sharia committees and joined its consultative Shura Council.

When ISI's leader Abu Umar al-Baghdadi died in a US raid in 2010 along with his deputy Abu Ayyub al-Masri, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was named his successor.

He inherited an organization that US commanders believed to be on the verge of a strategic defeat. But with the help of several Saddam-era military and intelligence officers, among them fellow former Camp Bucca inmates who were also released by the Americans,  he gradually rebuilt ISI.

By early 2013, it was once again carrying out dozens of attacks a month in Iraq. It had also joined the rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, thereby sending Syrian militants back from Iraq to set up the al-Nusra Front as al-Qaeda's affiliate in the country. There, they found a safe haven and easy access to weapons.

That April, Baghdadi announced the merger of his forces in Iraq and Syria and the creation of "Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant" (Isis/Isil). The leaders of al-Nusra and al-Qaeda rejected the move, but fighters loyal to Baghdadi split from al-Nusra and helped Isis remain in Syria.

At the end of 2013, Isis shifted its focus back to Iraq and exploited a political stand-off between the Shia-led government and the minority Sunni Arab community. Aided by tribesmen and former Saddam Hussein loyalists, Isis overran Falluja.

In June 2014, several hundred Isis militants overran the northern city of Mosul, routing the Iraqi army, and then advanced southwards towards Baghdad, massacring their adversaries and threatening to eradicate the country's many ethnic and religious minorities.

At the end of the month, after consolidating its hold over dozens of Iraqi cities and towns, Isis declared the creation of a "caliphate"  which is a state governed in accordance with Sharia by a caliphand renamed itself as  a  "Islamic State". It proclaimed Baghdadi as "Caliph Ibrahim" and demanded allegiance from Muslims worldwide.

Five days later, a video was released showing Baghdadi delivering a sermon at Mosul's Great Mosque of al-Nuri  which was his first public appearance on camera. Experts said Baghdadi's sermon evoked the letters and speeches of caliphs in the first centuries of Islam. He enjoined Muslims to emigrate to his territory in order to carry out a war for the faith against unbelievers. Tens of thousands of foreigners went on to heed his call and joined his terrorist caliph.

Just over a month later, an advance by IS militants into areas controlled by Iraq's Kurdish ethnic minority and the killing or enslaving of thousands of the Yazidi religious group, prompted a US-led multinational coalition to launch an air campaign against the jihadists in Iraq. The Americans started conducting air strikes in Syria that September, after IS beheaded several Western hostages.

The terrorists welcomed the prospect of direct confrontation with the US-led coalition, viewing it as a harbinger of an end-of-times showdown between Muslims and their enemies described in Islamic apocalyptic prophecies.

However, over the next five years, the jihadist group was slowly driven out of the territory it controlled by an array of various forces.

The ensuing war left many thousands of people dead across the two countries, displaced millions more, and devastated entire areas.

In Iraq, federal security forces and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters were supported by both the US-led coalition and a paramilitary force dominated by Iran-backed militias, the Popular Mobilisation (al-Hashd al-Shabo).

In Syria, the US-led coalition backed an alliance of Syrian Kurdish and Arab militias, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), and some Syrian Arab rebel factions in the southern desert. Troops loyal to President Assad had battled IS with the help of Russian air strikes and Iran-backed militiamen.

Throughout the fighting, the question of whether Baghdadi was dead or alive remained a source of mystery and confusion.

In June 2017, as Iraqi security forces battled the last remaining IS militants in Mosul, Russian officials said there was a "high probability" that Baghdadi was killed in a Russian air strike on the outskirts of the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, the de facto IS capital. Of course the story was untrue.

During that September IS released an audio message apparently from Baghdadi that included a call for the group's followers to "fan the flames of war on your enemies".

Such exhortations were not enough to stop SDF fighters capturing Raqqa the following month and driving its supporters into sparsely populated desert areas.

It was not until August 2018 that Baghdadi issued a new audio message. He urged followers in Syria to "persevere" in the face of its defeats on the battlefield.

The following month, the SDF launched its  final stage of its campaign to clear IS from eastern Syria, targeting a strip of land running along the River Euphrates around the town of Hajin where tens of thousands of IS militants and their families had gathered after fleeing Mosul and Raqqa.

There was no indication that Baghdadi was among them, but unconfirmed reports emerged later saying that he had been forced to flee to the Iraq's western desert after a faction within IS tried to oust him

In March 2019, the last piece of territory held by IS in Syria, near the village of Baghuz, was captured by the SDF, bringing a formal end to Baghdadi's "caliphate".

 President Donald Trump praised the "liberation" of Syria, but added: "We will remain vigilant against IS."

Meanwhile, the terrorist group. IS was thought to still have thousands of armed supporters in the region, many of them operating in sleeper cells. In Iraq, they were already carrying out attacks in an attempt to undermine the Iraq government's authority by creating an atmosphere of lawlessness, and sabotage.  reconciliation and reconstruction efforts.

In April 2019, Baghdadi appeared in a video for the first time in almost five years. But rather than speaking from a mosque pulpit in Mosul, this time he was sitting cross-legged on the floor of a room with a rifle by his side.

He acknowledged his group's losses and said IS was now waging a "battle of attrition", urging supporters to launch attacks to drain its enemies' human, military, economic, and logistical resources. "They need to know that jihad is continuing until the Day of Resurrection, and that God Almighty ordered us to wage jihad and did not order us to achieve victory."

That part of his statement was a clear order to his followers that their only goal was to kill all unbelievers.

What was not clear was when or where the video was recorded, but Baghdadi seemed to be in good health. He was seen sitting with at least three other men whose faces were masked or blurred, and going through files on IS branches elsewhere in the world. Analysts saw it as an attempt by Baghdadi to assert that he was still alive and in charge.

The American intelligence and special operations forces had been tracking Baghdadi for weeks to a location in northwest Syria. In October 2018, they located where he was hiding.

They chased him along a dead-end tunnel with his two small children in tow  and when he realized that there was no escape, he triggered his explosive vest under his clothing a(which he always wore) and blew himself up along with his two small  children who were under twelve.  

• His body was so mutilated, the way they determined that he was the man they wanted killed was to do aDNA test on the blood  on his underwear. They compared hi blood from, the samples they had earlier when he was a prisoner earlier.  His remains were dumped at sea. 

President Trump said that he watched much of the raid from the White House Situation Room, alongside the secretary of defense and other top military and national security officials 

Trump praised the U.S. troops and thanked others in the region who had helped in the effort. There were no human injuries on the American side, but one U.S. military dog was injured. the irony of thid sttscl is that \trump sbndoned the Kkurdish army a few days earlier and yet the Kurdish soldiers were the ones who guided the American invaders directly toBaghdadi's location.  

The man who was  to succeed Baghdadi was also killed in the raid.


ISIS has chosen  ,Abu Hhashmi Qurashi as their new leader.  He has to be mindful that he too will eventually be hunted down and \killed.

• The terrorists are coming back' according to a former American Nato commander who warns that the terror network will accelerate planned attacks after the death of its leader and will target Christmas markets where many Christmas shoppers   congregate. 

• NOVEMBER 1^st 2019: I just learned on this day that a photographer on the scene discovered a young puppy laying by its dead mother on the side of the road. He rescued the puppy and the reporter then took the traumatized puppy to a safer place and introduced it to other pooches. A vet was contacted and the dog was seen for vaccines and a checkup.