2024-06-09 23:23:54
- creator, Firas Killarney
- Position, BBC Arabic – Baghdad
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5 hours in the past
In a uncommon jail interview, the Islamic State chief’s widow shared her experiences of life with him.
Umm Hudhayfah was the primary spouse of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, whom she married whereas he oversaw the rule of the Islamic State, which managed a lot of Syria and Iraq. Elements of the interval have been described as brutal.
Baghdadi’s widow is presently being held in an Iraqi jail and is below investigation for terrorism-related crimes.
In the summertime of 2014, Umm Hudafa lived along with her husband within the Syrian metropolis of Raqqa, which was the stronghold of the Islamic Worldwide Group in Syria on the time.
As a result of Baghdadi was on essentially the most needed checklist because the chief of the extremist jihadist group, he usually traveled to different areas, and on one event he despatched a guard to the house to select up their two younger sons.
“He informed me they had been occurring a visit to show the kids the way to swim,” Um Hudhayfah stated.
There was a TV in the home and he or she was watching it secretly. “I used it when he was not at house,” she stated, explaining that Baghdadi thought the system was not working.
Umm Hudhayfah stated she had been in isolation since 2007 and was not allowed to observe tv or use another know-how, comparable to a cell phone.
She added that just a few days following the guards took the kids away, she turned on the TV and was shocked by a “large shock.”
She noticed her husband preach on the Al-Nuri Grand Mosque within the northern Iraqi metropolis of Mosul and declare himself a Muslim caliph for the primary time. This was simply weeks following his fighters took management of the realm.
Picture Supply, AFP
Go away a touch upon the picture, In July 2014, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi gave a speech on the Grand Nouri Mosque in Mosul.
Hudafa’s mom stated she was shocked to study her youngsters had been with him in Mosul as a substitute of studying to swim within the Euphrates River.
She described the scene in a crowded jail within the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, the place she was being held as Iraqi authorities interrogated her regarding her function in Islamic State actions and the group’s crimes.
Noisy sounds can be heard within the jail. Inmates accused of drug abuse, prostitution and different crimes are strolling round, and the sound of employees delivering meals from outdoors to inside can be heard.
We discovered a quiet place within the library and chatted for regarding two hours. Throughout our dialog, Umm Hudhayfah portrayed herself as a sufferer attempting to flee her husband and denied any involvement in any atrocities dedicated by ISIS.
That is in stark distinction to the outline given to her in a lawsuit filed by a Yazidi girl who was kidnapped and raped by members of the Islamic State. Yazidi girls accuse her of taking part within the “sexual slavery” of kidnapped women and girls.
Baghdadi’s widow didn’t even elevate her head as soon as through the interview. She was wearing black, leaving solely a part of her face uncovered, all the way down to the bottom of her nostril.
Umm Hudhayfah was born in 1976 to a conservative Iraqi household. In 1999 she married Ibrahim Awad al-Badri. ·Ibrahim Awad al-Badri later modified his identify to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Picture Supply, iraq intelligence service
Go away a touch upon the picture, Beforehand unreleased video footage taken in 2003 from a surveillance digicam of Ibrahim Awad al-Badri, later often known as Baghdadi, was supplied by Iraqi intelligence.
Baghdadi accomplished his research of Sharia legislation at Baghdad College, the place he was “spiritual however not extremist. He was conservative however open-minded,” his widow stated.
In 2004, a yr following the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, U.S. forces captured Baghdadi and held him for almost a yr in a detention heart at Camp Bucca within the south, together with a number of others who would turn out to be senior members of the Islamist group. Different jihadist teams.
Within the years following his launch, she claimed he had modified, saying: “He grew to become grumpy and irritable.”
Others who knew Baghdadi stated he had ties to Al Qaeda earlier than his arrest at Camp Bucca. However for Umm Hudafa, his arrest was a turning level, and he has since turn out to be more and more radicalized.
“He began having psychological issues,” she stated. When she requested him why, he informed her that he had “been via one thing you possibly can’t perceive.”
She believed he had been “sexually tortured in detention,” though he didn’t say so explicitly. Throughout Baghdadi’s arrest that yr, pictures had been launched from the US-run Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq, exhibiting prisoners being pressured to simulate sexual acts and carry out humiliating poses.
The BBC has despatched the allegation to the Pentagon for remark however has not acquired a response on the time of writing.
She stated she started to marvel if he belonged to an extremist group, including: “I might search his garments when he would come house, take a bathe or sleep.”
She continued: “I even seemed for bruises or cuts on his physique… I used to be confused.” However she discovered nothing.
She added: “I informed him, ‘I’ve gone astray’… which led to him throwing a tantrum.”
She described how they moved from one home to a different, how they adopted false identities, and the way Baghdadi took a second spouse. Umm Hudhayfah stated she requested for a divorce however she didn’t agree along with her husband’s situation of giving up the kids, so she stayed with him.
As Iraq descended right into a bloody sectarian warfare that lasted from 2006 to 2008, suspicion of its involvement within the actions of Sunni jihadist teams was misplaced. In 2010, he grew to become the chief of the Islamic State of Iraq, which was based in 2006 as a collective umbrella group for jihadist teams in Iraq.
“We moved to the Syrian countryside of Idlib in January 2012, the place I used to be totally conscious that he was a prince (Islamic State chief),” Umm Hudhayfah stated.
The Islamic State in Iraq was one of many teams that joined forces two years later to type the broader Islamic State, which declared a caliphate (an Islamic state dominated below Sharia legislation by a person thought-regarding the caliph of God on Earth).
Baghdadi started carrying Afghan clothes, rising a beard and carrying a gun, his widow stated.
Because the safety state of affairs in northwest Syria worsened through the nation’s civil warfare, they moved east to town of Raqqa, which later grew to become the de facto capital of the Islamic State’s “caliphate”. When she noticed her husband on tv, she dwell there.
Picture Supply, Reuters
Go away a touch upon the picture, An ISIS militant walks via the streets of Raqqa in June 2014
The brutality of ISIS is well-known, however in 2014 and 2015 it grew to become much more widespread.
A United Nations investigative crew reported that it discovered proof that the “Islamic State” dedicated genocide towards Iraq’s Yazidi minority and dedicated crimes towards humanity, together with homicide, torture, kidnapping and enslavement.
The Islamic State has used social media to broadcast its atrocities, together with beheading hostages and burning a Jordanian pilot.
There was one other notorious incident when the group massacred some 1,700 well-trained Iraqi troopers, principally Shiites, as they had been returning to their metropolis from the Spike army base north of Baghdad.
Some girls now residing with ISIS say they do not perceive what they’re stepping into, so I pressed Umm Hudhayfah to ask her regarding that period, and he or she stated she had been unable to grasp her state of affairs till then. Within the image, the atrocities had been described as a “enormous and inhuman shock” and that “unjust bloodshed is a horrible factor and on this regard they (the group’s militants) have exceeded the boundaries of human nature.”
Umm Hudafa stated she acquired into an argument along with her husband and informed him “his arms had been stained with the blood of those harmless folks” and informed him “there are different issues you are able to do based on Islamic legislation, comparable to instructing them” to repent .
She described how her husband communicated with ISIS leaders via a laptop computer.
He locked his laptop computer in his bag. “I attempted opening it to see what was occurring, however I do not know something regarding know-how and I stored getting requested for a password,” she stated.
Picture Supply, British Broadcasting Company
Go away a touch upon the picture, Hamid’s daughter and niece had been among the many Yazidi ladies delivered to Umm Hudhayfah’s house
There have been two younger ladies within the group, Samar and Zeina (not their actual names). Umm Hudhayfah claimed that they had solely been at their house in Raqqa for just a few days earlier than being transferred. However then the household moved to Mosul and Samar reappeared and stayed with them for regarding two months.
I contacted Samar’s father, Hamid, whose eyes crammed with tears as he recalled the second she was kidnapped.
He stated he had two wives, alongside together with his 26 youngsters, two brothers and their households, who had been kidnapped within the city of Hansur in Sinjar, whereas he fled to close by mountains.
Six of his youngsters, together with Samar, are nonetheless lacking. A few of them returned following paying ransom. Others additionally returned house following the liberation of the areas the place they had been detained.
One other woman, Zeina, is his niece and is believed to be trapped in northern Syria. Zaina’s sister Suad by no means met Umm Hudafa in particular person however was enslaved, raped and trafficked seven instances.
Hamid and Souad filed a civil lawsuit towards Umm Hudhayfah, accusing him of conspiring to kidnap and enslave Yazidi ladies. They didn’t imagine she was a helpless sufferer and demanded the loss of life penalty.
“She was liable for every little thing,” Souad stated. “She made a selection: one was to serve her and the opposite was to serve her husband, and my sister was one in every of them.” Souad’s story relies on Testimonies from different victims who returned house.
She added in her speech: “She is the spouse of felony Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and he or she is as a lot a felony as he’s.”
Go away a touch upon the picture, Souad is awaiting a listening to date in her civil swimsuit towards Umm Hudhayfah
We performed a recording of Souad’s interview within the presence of Umm al-Hudaafah, through which she responded: “I don’t deny that my husband is a felony,” however added that she was “involved regarding what occurred to them. I’m very sorry regarding what occurred.” and denies the fees towards her.
Umm Hudhayfah stated that shortly therefollowing, in January 2015, she briefly met with kidnapped American help employee Kayla Mueller, who had been held hostage for 18 months and Dying in captivity.
Umm Hudhayfah was taken to a secure home in Raqqa and heard noises upstairs, so she went to see what was occurring. Within the bed room, I discovered Kayla. Umm Hudhayfah stated Kayla “seemed comfortable…she informed me she was the sheikh’s spouse…I spotted she was referring to my husband.”
She stated Keira spoke of him “with love”, which made her jealous and offended as she tried to save lots of her sick daughter Nasiba, who later died.
This account is completely at odds with the testimony of these detained with Kayla. After Kayla’s loss of life, her mom Masha stated accounts from different prisoners indicated that “she didn’t marry the person, however that Baghdadi took her by pressure, raped her, exploited her, and he or she might be taken from him once more from jail.
An knowledgeable who has labored with the police’s anti-kidnapping squad additionally defined that if Kayla behaved as Umm Huzafar described, it might have been a survival technique.
The precise circumstances of Kayla’s loss of life stay unclear. On the time, ISIS claimed she was killed in an airstrike in Jordan, however the USA has at all times denied this, and now Iraqi safety sources inform us she was killed by ISIS.
In 2019, the US army raided the hideout of Baghdadi and a few of his members of the family in northwest Syria. Baghdadi detonated his explosive vest whereas trapped in a tunnel, killing himself and his two youngsters. Two of his 4 wives had been killed within the crossfire.
Nevertheless, Umm Hudhayfah was not there, residing in Turkey below an assumed identify and arrested in 2018. .
Her eldest daughter, Omaima, is in jail along with her. In the meantime, Fatima, who’s roughly 12 years previous, is being held in a juvenile detention heart. One in all her sons was killed in a Russian airstrike close to Homs, Syria, and one other was killed in a tunnel together with his father. As for the youthful son, he was positioned in an orphanage.
When our dialog ended, Umm Hudafa raised her head, and I took a fast look at her complete face, however her expression gave away nothing. As intelligence officers led her away from the place, she demanded extra details regarding her youngest baby. Now, once more in her cell, she should wait to seek out out whether or not she’s going to face felony fees.
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