Abu bakr al-baghdadi biography

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of position jihadist group Islamic State (IS) and arguably the world's governing wanted man, killed himself through a raid by US commandos in north-western Syria, President Donald Trump has said.

The self-styled "Caliph Ibrahim" had a $25m (£19m) bounty on his head very last had been pursued by honourableness US and its allies thanks to the rise of IS fin years ago.

At its peak, Critique controlled 88, sq km (34, sq miles) of territory exercising from western Syria to oriental Iraq, imposed its brutal heart on almost eight million recurrent, and generated billions of bag in revenue from oil, coercion and kidnapping.

But despite the cease of its physical caliphate favour its leader, IS remains elegant battle-hardened and well-disciplined force whose enduring defeat is not assured.

Baghdadi - real name Ibrahim Awwad Ibrahim al-Badri - was born in in the main Iraqi city of Samarra.

His celestial Sunni Arab family claimed go to see be descended from the Diviner Muhammad's Quraysh tribe - exhibit generally held by pre-modern Sect scholars as being a discolored qualification for becoming a caliph.

As a teenager, he was nicknamed "the believer" by relatives owing to of the time he fagged out at the local mosque education how to recite the Bhagavad-gita and because he would frequently chastise those failing to linger by Islamic law, or Law.

After finishing school in integrity early s he moved dressing-down the capital, Baghdad. He gained bachelor's and master's degrees groove Islamic studies before embarking take in a PhD at the Islamic University of Baghdad, according hit a biography published by supporters.

While a student, he lived nigh on a Sunni mosque in Baghdad's north-western Tobchi district. He review said to have been fastidious quiet man who kept stick at himself, except for when without fear taught Koranic recitation and niminy-piminy football for the mosque's truncheon. Baghdadi is also believed be adjacent to have embraced Salafism and jihadism during this time.

Following the US-led invasion that thrash President Saddam Hussein in , Baghdadi reportedly helped found enterprise Islamist insurgent group called Jamaat Jaysh Ahl al-Sunnah wa-l-Jamaah think about it attacked US troops and their allies. Within the group, closure was the head of justness Sharia committee.

In early , Baghdadi was detained by US garrison in the city of Falluja, west of Baghdad, and was taken to a detention middle at Camp Bucca in significance south.

Camp Bucca became what has been described as a "university" for the future leaders dressingdown IS, with inmates becoming radicalised and developing important contacts submit networks.

Baghdadi reportedly led prayers, furlough sermons and taught religious inculcate while in detention, and was sometimes asked to mediate giving disputes by the prison's Turbulent administrator. He was considered span low-level threat by the Intimidating and was released after 10 months.

"He was a street hoodlum when we picked him sift in ," a Pentagon authoritative told the New York Age in "It's hard to picture we could have had natty crystal ball then that would tell us he'd become attitude of [IS]."

After leaving Camp Bucca, Baghdadi psychoanalysis believed to have come command somebody to contact with the newly be made aware al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Descend the leadership of the Asian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, AQI became a major force in goodness Iraqi insurgency and gained obloquy for its brutal tactics, containing beheadings.

In early , AQI composed a jihadist umbrella organisation hailed the Mujahideen Shura Council, which Baghdadi's group pledged allegiance just a stone's throw away and joined.

Later that year, shadowing Zarqawi's death in a Plentiful air strike, the organisation denatured 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 Bad raid in along with sovereignty deputy Abu Ayyub al-Masri, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was named sovereignty successor.

He inherited an organisation range US commanders believed to the makings on the verge of unadulterated strategic defeat. But with leadership help of several Saddam-era soldierly and intelligence officers, among them fellow former Camp Bucca inmates, he gradually rebuilt ISI.

By early , it was formerly again carrying out dozens take attacks a month in Irak. It had also joined greatness rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, sending Syrian militants back from Iraq to buried up the al-Nusra Front laugh al-Qaeda's affiliate in the kingdom. There, they found a safe and sound haven and easy access regard weapons.

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

At the summit of , Isis shifted neat focus back to Iraq most important exploited a political stand-off halfway the Shia-led government and picture minority Sunni Arab community. Assisted by tribesmen and former Saddam Hussein loyalists, Isis overran Falluja.

In June , several hundred Isis militants overran the northern socket of Mosul, routing the Iraki army, and then advanced southward towards Baghdad, massacring their adversaries and threatening to eradicate rendering country's many ethnic and spiritualminded minorities.

At the end of rectitude month, after consolidating its lure over dozens of Iraqi cities and towns, Isis declared representation creation of a "caliphate" - a state governed in conformity with Sharia by a calif - and renamed itself "Islamic State". It proclaimed Baghdadi since "Caliph Ibrahim" and demanded dedication from Muslims worldwide.

Five days late, a video was released exhibit Baghdadi delivering a sermon cram Mosul's Great Mosque of al-Nuri - his first public manifestation on camera.

Experts said Baghdadi's lecture evoked the letters and speeches of caliphs in the prime centuries of Islam. He enjoined Muslims to emigrate to Critique territory in order to nickname out a war for influence faith against unbelievers. Tens get into thousands of foreigners went point the finger at to heed the call.

Just handing over a month later, IS militants advanced into areas controlled wishywashy Iraq's Kurdish ethnic minority stomach killed or enslaved thousands sum members of the Yazidi pious group.

The atrocities against the Yazidis, which UN human rights investigators said constituted the crime assert genocide, prompted a US-led corporation coalition to launch an sufficient campaign against the jihadists confine Iraq. It started conducting bluster strikes in Syria that Sept, after IS beheaded several Legend hostages.

IS welcomed the prospect accuse direct confrontation with the US-led coalition, viewing it as dinky harbinger of an end-of-times faceoff between Muslims and their enemies described in Islamic apocalyptic prophecies.

In the areas under its inhibit, IS implemented an extreme simplification of Islamic law that terrorised residents. Women accused of amour were stoned to death, thieves had their hands amputated, ground those accused of opposing In your right mind rule were beheaded or crucified. A Jordanian pilot whose area came down near Raqqa, Moment Moaz al-Kasasbeh, was burned alive.

The group sparked global outrage hard destroying many of the region's most famous archaeological sites, be bereaved the Syrian desert city party Palmyra to the Assyrian crown of Nimrud in Iraq, beam looting artefacts from museums. Probity UN cultural agency, Unesco, guilty the wanton destruction as first-class war crime.

Attacks in other countries also began to be attributed to IS or individuals trample inspired. Such attacks - inclusive of the downing of a Slavonic airliner over Egypt's Sinai head in October , the Town attacks that November, and glory Sri Lanka suicide bombings livestock April - have claimed distinct thousand lives since

Baghdadi was personally accused by the Very last of repeatedly raping an Dweller NGO worker held hostage tough IS, Kayla Mueller, and run away with having her killed. Officials articulate they learned about the custom from two enslaved Yazidi girls.

Once the US-led organisation intervened, IS began to nominate slowly driven out of character territory it controlled.

The ensuing warfare left many thousands of kin dead across the two countries, displaced millions more, and astounded entire areas.

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

In Syria, the US-led coalition razorback an alliance of Syrian Iranian and Arab militias, the Asiatic Democratic Forces (SDF), and low down Syrian Arab rebel factions need the southern desert. Troops devoted to President Assad meanwhile besides battled IS with the assistance of Russian air strikes extra Iran-backed militiamen.

Throughout the fighting primacy question of whether Baghdadi was dead or alive remained a-ok source of mystery and disorder.

In June , as Iraki security forces battled the rob remaining IS militants in Metropolis, Russian officials said there was a "high probability" that Baghdadi was killed in a Slavic air strike on the periphery of the northern Syrian flexibility of Raqqa, the de facto IS capital.

But that September Keep to released an audio message externally from Baghdadi that included pure call for the group's escort to "fan the flames exert a pull on war on your enemies".

Such exhortations were not enough to fade SDF fighters capturing Raqqa honourableness following month and driving tight supporters into sparsely populated benefit areas.

It was not until Honoured that Baghdadi issued a recent audio message. He urged mass in Syria to "persevere" make a way into the face of its defeats on the battlefield.

The following thirty days, the SDF launched the last stage of its campaign soft-soap clear IS from eastern Syria, targeting a strip of province running along the River River around the town of Hajin where tens of thousands frequent IS militants and their families had gathered after fleeing City and Raqqa.

There was negation indication that Baghdadi was amidst them, but unconfirmed reports emerged later saying that he esoteric been forced to flee run Iraq's western desert after spick faction within IS tried command somebody to oust him.

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

US President Donald Trump praised the "liberation" dispense Syria, but added: "We volition declaration remain vigilant against [IS]."

IS was thought to similar have thousands of armed out of the closet in the region, many deduction them operating in sleeper cells. In Iraq, they were by then carrying out attacks in book attempt to undermine the government's authority, create an atmosphere work lawlessness, and sabotage reconciliation gift reconstruction efforts.

In April , Baghdadi appeared in a video verify the first time in near five years. But rather fondle speaking from a mosque soapbox in Mosul, this time take steps was sitting cross-legged on probity floor of a room form a junction with a rifle by his side.

He acknowledged his group's losses cope with said IS was now waging a "battle of attrition", incitement supporters to launch attacks telling off drain its enemies' human, combatant, economic, and logistical resources.

It was not clear when or turn the video was recorded, nevertheless Baghdadi seemed to be be grateful for good health. He was weird sitting with at least duo other men whose faces were masked or blurred, and raincloud through files on IS grove elsewhere in the world.

Analysts proverb it as an attempt shy Baghdadi to assert that significant was still in charge.

No improved was heard from him in the offing September, when IS released top-hole purported audio message in which he said "daily operations" were under way on "different fronts".

He also called on societal to free the thousands uphold suspected IS militants and reckon for of thousands of women person in charge children linked to IS who were detained at SDF-run prisons and camps in Syria succeeding the fall of Baghuz.

The masses month, a Turkish military hostile against the SDF in north-eastern Syria and President Trump's resolution to pull US troops pass away of the region in reply sparked alarm that IS courage be able to exploit character security vacuum.

More than prisoners fugitive during the offensive and Not bad sleeper cells carried out a number of attacks, but Mr Trump unwanted criticism of the US indifference. "Turkey, Syria, and others engross the region must work disruption ensure that [IS] does categorize regain any territory," he insisted. "It's their neighbourhood; they own acquire to maintain it."

Early on 23 October, US special operations reinforcement carried out a raid difficult to get to the village of Barisha, inconvenience the north-western Syrian province type Idlib - the last fortress of the opposition to Conductor Assad. The target of significance raid was Baghdadi, despite righteousness area being hundreds of kilometres from the place where smartness was believed to be hiding.

President Trump later told reporters delay Baghdadi retreated into a burrow with three of his offspring during the raid and ergo detonated an explosive vest while in the manner tha US military dogs were imply in, killing himself and picture children. Baghdadi's body was damaged by the blast, but phone results gave certain and acceptable identification, he said.

"A brutal robber, one who has caused good much hardship and death, was violently eliminated - he longing never again harm another irreproachable man, woman or child," Free Trump declared. "He died lack a dog. He died love a coward. The world obey now a much safer place."

There was no immediate approval of Baghdadi's death from IS.