Islamic State group chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who purportedly appeared for the first time in five years in an IS propaganda video released on Monday, is the world’s most wanted man who has so far eluded capture.
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 in its so-called “caliphate”. 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.
It is unclear when the footage was filmed, but the man said to be Baghdadi referred to last week’s deadly attack in Sri Lanka and to the months-long fight for IS’s final bastion Baghouz, which ended in March.
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. His whereabouts have never been confirmed.
“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.